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Welcome to “Your First 90 Days,” a series examining how pharmaceutical executives plan for success in their new roles. Today we speak with Kahn Sertel, chief operating officer at Omega Therapeutics, an epigenomics company that recently signed a deal with Novo Nordisk to tackle obesity.
Leading pioneers often attract media and investor attention, and when a venture capitalist-launched biotech lands a deal with a big pharma company in a fast-growing area like obesity (as Omega Therapeutics recently did), the company’s profile increases even more.
The company’s epigenomics platform designs mRNA medicines that regulate gene expression to treat a range of diseases, including those that have historically been difficult to treat. Since its launch in 2019, its clinical pipeline has been focused on oncology and immunology, but Omega is also looking to A new, undisclosed treatment for obesity It partnered with Novo Nordisk earlier this year.
Under the terms of the agreement, Novo will reimburse research and development costs and select one target designed to enhance metabolic activity and advance it into clinical development. Omega and Pioneering Medicines, its flagship in-house drug discovery and development division, will receive up to $532 million in upfront payments, milestones and royalties. The collaboration is a major win for Omega and may signal the company’s long-term strategy.
The stakes have risen with the arrival of Omega’s new chief operating officer, Kahn Sertel, who joined the team at the end of May and is focused on building new partnerships for the company.
“The interest of major partners in our platform is a validation of our approach on a global scale,” said Certel.
Kahn Sertel, Chief Operating Officer, Omega Therapeutics
Used with permission from Omega Therapeutics
Certel most recently served as Chief Operating Officer at Biocity Biopharma, a biotechnology company developing assets in oncology and chronic kidney disease. Prior to that, he was Global Head of External Innovation for Oncology at Sanofi, where he led strategic alliances. He says his experience at Sanofi helped him learn the ins and outs of commercial and scientific value needed to forge productive partnerships. Additionally, his understanding of networks and the interval governance process guides his approach to the deal process.
“Overall, understanding the inner workings of big pharma can help smaller biotech companies get on the right track,” he said.
He joins the company at a critical juncture for the company, which in March announced job cuts. 35% of total employees As part of the cost-cutting plan, the company’s cash flow will be extended through 2025.
“All companies are prioritizing and repositioning their pipelines, which is creating a lot of opportunities for smaller biotech companies moving forward…”
Khan Celtel
Omega Therapeutics CBO
The company said the plan will “narrow its focus” on generating “meaningful clinical data” for its lead candidate, OTX-2002, which is in early-stage testing for hepatocellular carcinoma and other solid tumors linked to the c-MYC gene.
Here, we spoke with Sertel about his work at Omega, bouncing back after a layoff, and what makes a great strategic partner.
This interview has been edited for clarity and style.
PHARMAVOICE: What will be your focus in your new role?
Kahn Celter: Responsibilities will focus on increasing in-licensing activity, out-licensing activity and developing potential early and later stage collaborations with partners who can provide expertise to Omega and who may contribute to Omega’s platform.
How would you describe the environment for finding new partnerships?
We’re seeing a lot of interest in partnerships across multiple therapeutic areas. Oncology continues to move forward strongly, but I think people are very excited and interested in the immuno/inflammation and cardiometabolism areas. It’s very active with all of the new targets and new biology that are being discovered today.
All companies, including big pharma, are prioritizing and repositioning their pipelines, which creates many opportunities for smaller biotech companies to step up and contribute in the field.
Tell us about the potential obesity treatment you are developing in partnership with Novo Nordisk.
This agreement was signed just before I arrived at Omega and is an early-stage target-based collaboration. The target has not been made public, but we are very excited about it because this is new biology and it allows us to externally demonstrate that our technology is not just focused on one therapeutic area, but can be applied to multiple therapeutic areas, even challenging areas such as cardiometabolism.
Omega is not an oncology company, or a cardiometabolism company, or an immunofluorescence company. We have a very strong platform and we have a tremendous amount of know-how built around that platform. We support our partners with our technology and our platform to help them get to where they need to be in treating the challenging targets that we know are so important in these disease areas.
What makes a good partner for Omega?
We want to take this technology to new biology, new targets, and targets that have been very difficult to drug. We have the ability to target transcription factors that have been very difficult to target with existing modalities. So partners that are committed to innovating, that have potent, validated targets and are looking for ways to drug those targets are great partners for us and we want to learn from them, both from a scientific standpoint and from a commercialization standpoint.
An added advantage we can offer is our connections and how we can really build the right storytelling to help other potential partners understand and get interested in what we can offer them.
What is Omega’s bounce back strategy following the layoffs, and will you be stepping in to help reprioritize?
It’s a very tough time for all biotech companies from a fundraising perspective. And one of the things that sets Omega apart is that our management team knows how to navigate through tough times. We have strong belief in our platform and we’re focused on growing it, adding to our feature list, and partnering with potential innovators to turn our platform into a drug manufacturing machine.
And I talk again about the leadership experience, not just in terms of weathering these rough seas, but also in terms of retaining talent and maintaining momentum during these tough times. If you visit Omega today and walk down the hallways, you can really feel the excitement of the people here and the strong belief in the platform. And as we build more partnerships, that’s obviously going to add to the strength of driving the company forward.
