BOSTON & ST. LOUIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Omniose, a company developing polysaccharide conjugate vaccines against serious bacterial threats, announced today the expansion of the leadership team to include Timothy Cooke, Ph.D., MBA as Chief Executive Officer and Roman Fleck. Ph.D., MBA as Chairperson. Dr. Cooke has over 30 years of experience in the vaccine industry and is active in vaccine policy roles, including the Biotechnology Industry Representative to the US National Vaccine Advisory Committee and Observer to the WHO Technical Advisory Group on Vaccines and Antimicrobial Resistance. Dr. Fleck is a seasoned entrepreneur & venture investor with over 20 years of experience in the biotech industry. The research team will be led by Christian Harding, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Omniose.
Omniose is also announcing the formation of its Scientific Advisory Board including Mario Feldman, Ph.D., a Co-Founder and pioneer in engineering glycoconjugate vaccines using enzymatic conjugation, Viliam Pavliak, Ph.D., who has deep industry expertise in conjugate vaccine development at Wyeth/Pfizer, and Steven Projan, Ph.D., who brings broad industry experience in infectious disease, drug and vaccine development at MedImmune, Novartis and Wyeth/Pfizer.
“Omniose combines great science with a dedicated team on a mission to protect people from serious bacterial infections,” said Timothy Cooke, CEO. “Our approach greatly expands the universe of bacterial targets that can be addressed by bioconjugate vaccines.”
About Omniose
The Omniose bioconjugate vaccine platform enables the precise enzymatic attachment of virtually any bacterial polysaccharide (sugar) antigen to engineered carrier proteins within a single E. coli cell. Hence the name Omniose, “all sugars”. This allows the already established benefits of bioconjugation to be applied to a broader range of bacterial vaccines. Bioconjugation is a much simpler process than conventional chemical conjugation methods and has the potential to produce higher quality vaccines. However, the enzymes used for bioconjugation thus far could only address a limited range of bacterial targets. Omniose is breaking through this barrier.
The company’s research operations are located at BioGenerator Accelerator Labs in St. Louis with executive leadership based in the Boston area. The company was previously known as VaxNewMo.
