Omega Therapeutics Announces Strategic Research Collaboration With Stanford University School of Medicine


Omega Therapeutics, Inc. recently announced a strategic research collaboration with researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine to explore the therapeutic potential of Omega Epigenomic Controllers (OECs) to control ocular disease genes associated with inflammation or regeneration of ocular tissues.

Under the terms of the collaboration, Omega and members of the Ophthalmology Department of Stanford University School of Medicine will use the OMEGA Epigenomic Programming platform to discover and research novel ocular targets for potential future OEC development candidates. Albert Wu, MD, PhD, FACS, Associate Professor of Ophthalmology, will serve as principal investigator. Other contributors will include Jeffrey Goldberg, MD, PhD, Professor and Chair of Ophthalmology, and Michael Kapiloff, MD, PhD, Associate Professor (Research) of Ophthalmology.

“Through this research collaboration, we aim to expand the reach of our OMEGA platform within regenerative medicine, immunology, and inflammation with ocular disease targets,” said Mahesh Karande, President and Chief Executive Officer of Omega Therapeutics. “We will continue exploration of the broad potential of our disruptive platform and OECs, our new class of mRNA therapeutics as programmable epigenetic medicines.”

Detailed financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed.

Omega Therapeutics is a development-stage biotechnology company pioneering the first systematic approach to use mRNA therapeutics as programmable epigenetic medicines by leveraging its OMEGA Epigenomic Programming platform. The OMEGA platform harnesses the power of epigenetics, the mechanism that controls gene expression and every aspect of an organism’s life from cell genesis, growth and differentiation to cell death. The OMEGA platform enables control of fundamental epigenetic processes to correct the root cause of disease by returning aberrant gene expression to a normal range without altering native nucleic acid sequences. Omega’s engineered, modular, and programmable mRNA-encoded epigenetic medicines, Omega Epigenomic Controllers, target specific intervention points amongst the thousands of  mapped and validated novel DNA-sequence-based epigenomic loci to durably tune single or multiple genes to treat and cure disease through Precision Genomic Control. Omega is currently advancing a broad pipeline of development candidates spanning a range of disease areas, including oncology, regenerative medicine, multigenic diseases including immunology, and select monogenic diseases. For more information, visit omegatherapeutics.com.