CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Amgen (NASDAQ:
AMGN) and LabCentral today announced that Octagon Therapeutics and
Seranova Bio have each won an Amgen Golden Ticket to LabCentral,
Cambridge's premier launchpad for
high-potential life sciences and biotech start-ups. The two Golden
Ticket winners were chosen by an internal team of Amgen scientific
leaders and live audience members at a virtual pitch event on
Dec. 9, 2020. Five finalists pitched
their business plans to attendees where the audience members' votes
served as input for the Amgen internal committee's decision.
Amgen has served as a platinum sponsor of LabCentral since 2014,
awarding Golden Tickets to 12 innovative start-ups to date. Each
year, Amgen nominates two early-stage companies to take up
residence in LabCentral's Kendall
Square facilities, which includes one year of free bench
space for one scientist and access to the shared ammenties and
resources offered by LabCentral. As recipients of the Amgen Golden
Ticket, Octagon Therapeutics and Seranova Bio will also partner
with Amgen scientists for ongoing mentoring throughout the
year.
"Our strategic partnership with LabCentral allows Amgen to
identify and empower some of the most promising start-up companies
and advance ground-breaking science underway here in Cambridge," said Rohini Deshpande, Ph.D., vice president of Drug
Substance Technologies and site head at Amgen Massachusetts. "We
are excited about innovative technology presented by Octagon
Therapeutics and Seranova Bio and look forward to engaging with
both as they continue working to better serve patients."
"This is a tremendous opportunity for Octagon," said
Isaac Stoner, president and chief
executive officer of Octagon Therapeutics. "The resources and
community available at LabCentral provide a huge advantage to
fast-growing life science companies. We are also excited to
collaborate with Amgen scientists as we advance our important class
of medicines towards the clinic and expand the platform into new
disease areas."
About Octagon Therapeutics
Octagon is developing a new class of targeted
immunomodulators for severe autoimmune disease. The company was
founded on novel biological insights into the pathological
activation of lymphocytes that cause autoimmune disease; the
metabolic processes in these immune cells are subtly altered when
compared to a healthy immune response. These insights have
led to the development of a differentiated small molecule
therapeutic strategy that leverages these differences to
specifically target aberrant immune activation while sparing
healthy immune functioning. Octagon's lead program, OTG177,
specifically inhibits autoreactive B cells involved in
pemphigus/pemphigoid but the approach is relevant in a wide range
of autoimmune disorders.
"Receiving the Amgen Golden Ticket will open doors for our
company," said Aaron Ring, M.D.
Ph.D., co-founder of Seranova Bio. "We are thrilled to receive the
scientific, operational, and business development support from
Amgen. We know this opportunity will help us advance our work to
develop novel therapeutics using our unique target discovery
platform.
About Seranova Bio
Seranova Bio is striving to establish a new paradigm for
therapeutic target discovery. The company's Rapid Extracellular
Antigen Profiling (REAP) platform combines high-quality,
comprehensive protein sampling with next-generation DNA sequencing
to profile patients' autoantibodies with higher throughput and
fidelity than existing technologies. Seranova Bio's technological
breakthrough reveals, in much greater depth, the underlying humoral
response to disease and provides critical insights to drug
developers. Seranova Bio aims to collaborate with pharmaceutical
partners to discover novel therapeutic targets and develop new
treatments to autoimmune disease, neurodegeneration, and
cancer.
About Amgen
Amgen is committed to
unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from
serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and
delivering innovative human therapeutics. This approach begins by
using tools like advanced human genetics to unravel the
complexities of disease and understand the fundamentals of human
biology.
Amgen focuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages
its expertise to strive for solutions that improve health outcomes
and dramatically improve people's lives. A biotechnology pioneer
since 1980, Amgen has grown to be one of the
world's leading independent biotechnology companies, has
reached millions of patients around the world and is developing a
pipeline of medicines with breakaway potential.
For more information, visit www.amgen.com and follow
us on www.twitter.com/amgen.
CONTACT: Amgen, Thousand Oaks
Megan Fox, 805-447-1423 (media)
Trish Rowland,
805-447-5631(media)
Arvind Sood, 805-447-1060
(investors)
View original content to download
multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amgen-awards-two-local-biotech-start-ups-with-golden-ticket-to-labcentral-301195561.html
SOURCE Amgen