Fifteen months ago we saw Rising Energy Prices, Interest rates increasing and the NASDAQ in full decline, while it is still choppy waters ahead, it feels like we are in a predictable cycle providing great comfort to investors. Early stage companies are always under pressure to reach their next milestone/hit their next target to gain access to more funding from various institutions such as VCs and government grants. To help address this challenge, in August 2022, we launched the o2h Kickstarter competition with the purpose of supporting early stage biotech companies that have secured initial funding, have exciting drug targets, and have the ability to scale, but need expert services to supercharge their chemistry efforts to meet the next scientific and funding milestones.

To keep things simple, the principle of the award was to provide fledgling small molecule biotech therapeutic companies with a six-person team of experienced o2h Discovery (o2h) chemists coupled with o2h trainee chemists at a fractional cost. Although o2h has a broader range of capabilities in Med Chem, ADME, and Biology Screening Capabilities (UK&India), we decided not to overly complicate the Kick Starter Award.  

Did the o2h Kickstarter award help early stage companies with a chemistry boost?

The Kickstarter award is one of the most appreciated campaigns that we have ever run in the 20 years of running our CRO business. From the o2h perspective, this award also brought also evermore closer to the early stage grassroots biotech community in exciting new biotech geographies such as Australia, UK and Israel with more to follow (not forgetting our American cousins). The grassroots of the o2h CRO business has been to work with Biotech companies very early in their lifecycle, providing great support and then o2h Discovery growing with the biotech able to deliver investor objectives. So a win-win! o2h Discovery has now launched three competitions in the UK, Australia and has a current open competition in Israel.  We have awarded more than 10 kick-starter awards so far (Watch-out USA and Japan coming next!).   

Expanding the reach of the o2h Kickstarter award through 50 Golden Partners.

To further expand the reach of the award we are also reaching out to Venture Capital, Charities, Technology Transfer Offices, Formal Angel Groups and Biomedical Institutions that invest into Biotech Companies (early!). o2h discovery is seeking to approve a set of 50 Golden Partners which will have a priority review of new biotech companies with the o2h Kickstarter Award Board to obtain an immediate award. 

o2h Chaitime Special – Meet Some of our Award Winners, 26th May 2023, 3pm

Since the first days of lockdown o2h has been running a ChaiTime series of webinars in which a global group of biotechies and investors discuss themes trending through the sector. We will be dedicating a chaitime special to some of our award winners, these are early stage companies working on novel drug targets, many of which are below the radar. We will be quizzing them on both the science, start-up phase and what comes next. This will be an interesting ChaiTime for the Investors, Scientists, and Drug Scouts, Potential Applicants of the o2h Kickstarter Award/Golden Partners and those that just want to be entertained with Biotech Banter. o2h Chaitime Webinar on 26th May at 3:00pm BST.

Register now to book your seat! Sign up

Winners of the first o2h Kickstarter Competition

For our first o2h Kickstarter competition, we had received applications from more than 30 companies across the UK, and six of them had made it to the winner’s list after thorough evaluation and discussions with our internal review committee. We are glad to report that these early awardee companies such as Sevenless, Kuano and Alevin, amongst the others have been highly appreciate of the support that they received, which enabled them to move quickly through their initial discovery milestones. Read more

Some of the Winner’s Feedback

Winners of the o2h Kickstarter Competition 2.0 (Australia)

Australia participated enthusiastically in our second edition of the o2h Kickstarter competition. We are delighted to share that Psylo and Gertrude are two of the winners of o2h Kickstarter competition 2.0. And some other companies are still under review with our evaluation committee. We will announce additional winners soon. Stay tuned! Read more

Launch of the o2h Kickstarter Competition 3.0 (Israel)

The third edition of the o2h Kickstarter competition 3.0, which was exclusively for early stage Israeli biotech companies, ended a few days ago. We had a tremendous response from some of the promising early stage biotech companies based out of Israel, and we will shortly announce the winners after evaluation. Read more

Stay tuned for further updates about upcoming Kickstarter competitions!

Contact details:

o2h discovery team

discovery@o2h.com