The biotech enterprise Omnia Molecular, which operates from the PCB-Santander Bioincubator at the Barcelona Science Park and was founded by IRB Barcelona researcher Lluís Ribas de Pouplana, has closed funding negotiations headed by “Caixa Capital Risc”, the risk capital section of “la Caixa", worth 2.1M€ . This round of funding, which is supported by the Empresa Nacional de Innovación (ENISA), has also involved the founding partners of Omnia Molecular (Lluís Ribas, Juan Gargallo y Eugeni Roure) and the new managerial team, comprised by Raphael Klingmann, who serves as CEO, and Dariusch Mani.

Omnia Molecular is devoted to the discovery and development of new antibiotics. The company has a proprietary screening platform to detect not only antibiotic activity but also the potential toxicity of new compounds, thereby accelerating the time from discovery to development of efficient non-toxic drugs. The objective of this new round of funding is to back the development of its most promising compounds and enter pre-clinical trails with several of these in 2012. The first trials in humans are planned for 2014. Once their efficacy in animal models has been proved, some of these compounds will be available for co-development with partners from the pharmaceutical industry. Omnia Molecular has been supported by “Caixa Capital Risc” since 2007.

Since 2008 “Omnia Molecular” has validated its technology for use in distinct pathogens, thus demonstrating its technical viability, and has fine-tuned assays for research into new drugs. At present the company has three optimized assays to discover compounds with therapeutic potential, and also has agreements with several companies and organizations to exploit their compound libraries for molecules of interest.

IRB Barcelona, of which Omnia Molecular is a spin-off, has as one of its missions the promotion of innovation and the transfer of technology to the private sector.

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