Additionally, it really drives why we’re working on — one of the reasons why we really want to work in the academic space. Not only are the academics coming up with novel ideas and new things that are interesting, the cutting-edge ideas. But also they’re training the next era of scientists. And these scientists go to other companies, and they are familiar with OmniAb and then that brings additional deal. So really, it’s deals, deals beget deals and we’re doing everything we can to keep pushing that forward. But it’s — in a lot of ways, it starts to feed on itself.
Puneet Souda: Got it. I appreciate that context. And then just on the type of projects that you’re getting, obviously, some challenging projects were the early ones that you were receiving in the early days. How does that look now? Are you getting more sort of routine projects or a slew of projects? Just trying to understand sort of how does that — how is it looking in terms of the — for lack of better work, how challenging the target is versus situations where a company might be in funding — is facing tougher challenges in the market and in the funding situation and they’re offloading the work to you in order to be more efficient capital-wise. Maybe just give us a sense of the type of projects you’re getting now versus over the last two years?
Matthew Foehr: Yes. Puneet, great question, I’m glad you brought it up. In some ways, as we look across our portfolio, it’s, at times, it’s a bit of a misconception that our technology, our group of technologies, our suite of technologies are really suited only for difficult targets. Now there are a number of targets that are hard to track and that partners come to us for, but it’s really not the case that it’s really only highly conserved or only difficult targets that come our way. In fact, because of the diversity of species and diversity of platforms and other things, we often see partners who are approaching us for known targets, maybe ones that are — we’ll call it a household name type target in the community with which we’re talking here, but they’re looking for a new way to approach it, right, that has never been shown before.
And our technology is quite amenable to that as well. But we’ve got a broad array of diverse targets across our growing portfolio of programs and that is driven not only by the innovation with the platform, but also the longer-term benefits partners can get not only scientifically but IP and other things as well. I don’t know, Bill or Bob, you may want to add any color?
Bill Harriman: No, I think you got most of it. I mean there are those partners who have targets that are nonconventional. They’re very novel. Sometimes they’re [indiscernible] so we’ve invested a lot in our protein science capabilities so we can address those targets. So we’re ready for those. We engage on those. We’re happy to do those. But at the same time, we do have, as Matt mentioned, a lot of partners coming in with very well-validated targets, let’s call it that. And in some cases, they’re looking for a next-generation antibody. It might be something where they think they can really benefit from an OmnidAb format or even OmniTaur type of format. So they’re looking for a different modality in a sense or in some cases, just want to leverage the chicken and get a new epitope that hasn’t been seen before in most of the standard therapies or standard discoveries.
Puneet Souda: Got it. And last one, if I could ask, and thanks for hosting this, guys. Do you — how do you see the growth of OmnidAb in these early stages? Can you compare and contrast to what you saw with OmniChicken when you launched it, and OmniRat? And then one for — just for Bob, a quick question, Bruker has invested into a screening platform. Wondering if that changes anything in the market in your view? Thank you.
Matthew Foehr: Yes. You can — well — yes, I’ll let Bob take the Bruker one.
Bob Chen: Yes. I think you’re referring to the Bruker acquisition of PhenomeX and kind of the formerly Beacon — Berkeley Lights Beacon platform. I mean I think that is platform we’ve known well. Actually, we even have partners who use that platform very well with OmniRat and have good successes with it. Our technology is one that — I actually have been working out for a long time. It’s one that I’ve kind of shepherded through from Stanford to Exela to now OmniAb. We have a strong IP portfolio, and we really do things in a very unique way because of that chip. I think we are very proud of kind of our throughput, both on specifically screening and the recovery. I think that’s illustrated with the case study we talked about just the scale data we get out and that exploration here is really a foundational tool to empower not just standard Discover, which it’s been in the workflows now for our partners now for the last few years.
We’re really looking forward as a large-scale data collection tool, and we hope to talk about more in the future.
Matthew Foehr: Yes. Thanks, Bob, and I’ll add to that as well, our — the exploration instruments, the only exploration instruments that exist anywhere in the world are within our walls, if you will. And that I think, is something that our partners value and attracts them to us as well. To your first question, Puneet on kind of comparing and contrasting OmnidAb versus the — I’ll say the early days or initial launch of OmniChicken or the first launch of OmniRat, I think the difference now, one is just a level of validation around our platform. We are leveraging the heritage of OmniChicken, which now has a program in the clinic and others that are quickly approaching the clinic. There’s a lot more visibility for not only our organization, but our technology is really driven by the hard work of these folks on the stage and a number of other folks back in the office and around the country.
From a business development perspective, from a marketing perspective, from a scientific and exploratory research perspective, which is something we’ve leaned a lot more into with some key hires recently. I think there’s a lot more visibility. And I’ll say, getting the kind of feedback that was highlighted in Todd’s section, really leading up to a launch and at the time of the launch, this is inbound feedback from partners. So that visibility is something that we really haven’t had in the past when we’ve launched a new technology. So for me personally, that excites me about the impact it could have and the ramp-up. We’ve invested, as I said, substantially in our infrastructure over the last 1.5 years expanding our capacity for chicken-related programs, really in anticipation of this and other downstream innovations.
