OmniAb Announces the Passing of Director Sunil Patel

EMERYVILLE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OmniAb, Inc. (NASDAQ: OABI) announces that Director Sunil Patel passed away suddenly last week. The Board of Directors and leadership of OmniAb extend their deepest condolences to those who loved and cared for Sunil and express their gratitude for Sunil’s many contributions to OmniAb.

Sunil Patel was appointed to OmniAb’s Board in November 2022 when OmniAb was spun-out of Ligand Pharmaceuticals as an independent, publicly-traded company, and previously served on the Ligand Pharmaceuticals Board of Directors since 2010.

“It is with profound sadness that we announce Sunil’s passing,” said John Higgins, OmniAb Board Chair. “Sunil was a highly-valued and engaged member of the OmniAb Board of Directors and played an important role driving our investments and strategy. Above that, he was a friend and colleague for the past two decades. He will be remembered by all who had the pleasure of working with him as a very thoughtful business operator, strongly devoted to cutting-edge science supporting medical research. He was kind and gentle, and an independent thinker who brought levity and joy to any meeting or encounter. Sunil’s support for antibody discovery research and the formation of OmniAb are among his most important business contributions. He saw the future of where the field was going and at every turn helped to drive our strategy. He will be remembered by those who had the pleasure of knowing him as a warm and incredibly bright individual of high integrity. For all who knew Sunil, we will honor his legacy as we advance our work.”

With more than 25 years of senior management and R&D experience in the biotechnology industry, Mr. Patel most recently worked as an independent consultant to biotechnology companies advising on strategy and corporate development initiatives. Previously, he served in executive roles at OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, Inc., including Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. He held senior management positions in corporate development, marketing and strategy with BiPar Sciences, Inc., Allos Therapeutics, Inc., Connetics, Abgenix, Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc. Early in his career Mr. Patel worked at McKinsey & Company serving biotechnology and pharmaceutical clients, and held scientific research positions at ZymoGenetics, Inc. and ProCyte Corporation. He received an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree in molecular bioengineering/biotechnology from the University of Washington.

About OmniAb^®

OmniAb’s discovery platform provides pharmaceutical industry partners access to diverse antibody repertoires and high-throughput screening technologies to enable discovery of next-generation therapeutics. At the heart of the OmniAb platform is the Biological Intelligence^™ (BI) of our proprietary transgenic animals, including OmniRat^®, OmniChicken^® and OmniMouse^® that have been genetically modified to generate antibodies with human sequences to facilitate development of human therapeutic candidates. OmniFlic^® (transgenic rat) and OmniClic^® (transgenic chicken) address industry needs for bispecific antibody applications though a common light chain approach, and OmniTaur^™ features unique structural attributes of cow antibodies for complex targets. We believe the OmniAb animals comprise the most diverse host systems available in the industry and they are optimally leveraged through computational antigen design and immunization methods, paired with high-throughput single B cell phenotypic screening and mining of next-generation sequencing datasets with custom algorithms to identify fully human antibodies with superior performance and developability characteristics. These proprietary technologies are joined with and leverage OmniDeep, which is a suite of in silico tools for therapeutic discovery and optimization that are woven throughout OmniAb’s various technologies and capabilities. Additionally, an established core competency focused on ion channels and transporters further differentiates OmniAb’s technology and creates opportunities in many emerging target classes. OmniAb antibodies have been leveraged across modalities, including bispecific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates and others.

The OmniAb suite of technologies span from BI-powered repertoire generation to cutting-edge antibody discovery and optimization offering a highly efficient and customizable end-to-end solution for the growing discovery needs of the global pharmaceutical industry.

For more information, please visit www.omniab.com.