Omios: The Right Team Comes Together to Fight Cancer

It’s a conventional wisdom that the right team can make or break a startup. But finding that team and recognizing the right pairing of complementary strengths and skills can present a challenge. For San Francisco-based Omios, it was a combination of strategy, luck, and timing that brought their team together.

Omios is developing oncolytic virus (OV) immunotherapies designed to selectively destroy cancer cells while directing the body's natural defenses against cancer. An oncolytic virus is a virus that preferentially infects and kills cancer cells. As infected cancer cells are destroyed by the replication of the virus, oncolysis, they release new infectious virus particles or virions to help destroy the remaining tumor.

The name “Omios” is a joining of the modern Greek word for virus, ἰός (iós) and “Om,” the Hindu word describing the first sound of the universe. For the founders, Omios represents the universe of viruses that can be harnessed to fight cancer.

Aldo Pourchet, the original founder of Omios, studied veterinary medicine and then became interested in how viruses can be used as a therapy for cancer and other illnesses. “I did my PhD in virology and gene therapy,” he said. “Viruses know humans very well. For hundreds of thousands of years, viruses have developed functions, proteins and genetic programs to manipulate human cells and the immune system. By following the virus, we can discover new mechanisms, and we can discover how to use that information to develop new therapies to fight diseases including cancer.”

After earning his PhD in France, Pourchet applied for a post-doc at New York University (NYU) with Professor Ian Mohr, already a leader in OV therapy. Mohr was the co-inventor of T-Vec, the oncolytic virus of Amgen, which secured commercial approval a decade ago. Pourchet worked with Mohr to develop an OV named T-Stealth; the platform was further developed by BeneVir Biopharm and acquired by Janssen Pharmaceuticals in 2018. It’s currently being evaluated in a Johnson & Johnson clinical trial for lung cancer.

“T-Stealth was the main project of my post-doc, during which I also established proof of efficacy for the OV that we later licensed and are currently developing at Omios,” said Pourchet.

Pourchet had been looking for co-founder colleagues for a few years. “It’s a challenge for startups to find people that bring what you as a founder don’t have—and sometimes, you have to figure out what you don’t have!” said Pourchet. “You realize that you need different skills and personalities to make a company. Sometimes you find someone, and then you realize it’s not a fit or there is no synergy. During my Regional NSF I-Corps cohort at NYU, I learned the importance of communications, about how to put the story out there and understand the market.  As a scientist, I realized that outside the lab, I wasn’t good at writing or telling our story well. And that’s when it clicked with Bruno.”

Bruno Larida, originally from France, first met Pourchet at a party in the Bay Area. Larida initially offered to do some fundraising for Omios, but nothing came of it. A few months later they reconnected at a conference and decided it was a sign from the universe.  

“We discovered that we like working together,” said Larida. “And we had very complementary skills. We were both seeking the Japanese concept of Ikigai—the intersection of what you love doing, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what pays the bills. Omios offers all of that. I was drawn to Omios because it is fundamentally a biomarker-driven company. This represents a potential game-changer for the oncolytic virus field, which has long awaited this level of therapeutic precision.”

Larida’s role is to put the Omios story together and then explain the company’s technology to investors and the public. “Bruno is the buffer between the science and the business,” said Pourchet. “His first job was to make the company mission, vision, and value proposition more investor friendly. And then he could focus on fundraising.”

Larida also works on building partnerships in the pharmaceutical industry that could license Omios’ technology in the future, and potentially invest in the near term, as well as marketing and strategic communications, bridging on outside advisors, and working collaboratively with the team to ensure the company is operating efficiently.

With an advisor, Pourchet participated in a Regional NSF I-Corps program at NYU in December 2023, followed by completion of the National NSF I-Corps in Summer 2024. Larida and Pourchet were then selected for the NYU Tech Venture Accelerator program earlier this year, which concluded with a Demo Day.

“It was a transformational, intense experience,” said Pourchet. “We spoke with oncologists and individuals from across the healthcare ecosystem.  One of our biggest takeaways from I-Corps was understanding the power of customer discovery interviews,” said Pourchet. “The most valuable information is only available when you speak to people in the field. And we must understand what’s happening in the hospital and in clinical trials—you only find out when you ask. Customer discovery is powerful. It was also challenging—we had a lot of information to process.”

“I-Corps also transformed our idea of where we were going and what we had to go through to get there,” he added. “We are continuing to do customer discovery, maintaining outreach, building relationships, and bringing people on as advisors and consultants, both formal and informally. I-Corps really influenced the story of the company—how we put our web site together was largely shaped by what we learned from that program.”

Anand Pai joined in early 2025. He was also a bioengineer by training and had also always held an interest in viruses. After working on therapeutics for seven years at Google, Pai was considering his next move and wanted to get back to work with viruses.

Pai randomly contacted Pourchet on LinkedIn. “I reached out to Aldo and said, ‘I have an idea about using viruses in oncology,’” said Pai. “I had looked up who else was working on this—it’s a relatively small space; there’s not a lot of people into it. We started to exchange ideas and technology, and here we are.”

“We all work together well—we have complementary skills,” said Pourchet. “Everyone brings their own ideas. It’s so important to feed the machine and share ideas about what we can offer, how to present our story, how to source funding, and how to grow our pipeline.”

“Our goal going forward is to work together for Omios and also have our own projects,” added Pourchet. “In some ways we are not a ‘regular’ startup. Rather than producing a single therapy, I want us to be a platform for solutions using oncolytic viruses.”

Omios has benefitted from numerous NY I-Corps Hub and NYC Innovation Hot Spot programs, including a workshop to help prepare for the NSF and NIH SBIR proposal writing process. The company is licensing the intellectual property (IP) from NYU and Arizona State University (ASU). The team is currently developing new IP to include in their platform; they are also seeking partnerships with industry experts and collaborate with oncologists at leading cancer centers in the US, UK, and Europe.

“We are integrating everything we need to prepare for the biotech preclinical market,” said Larida. “I-Corps really helped us to find the right people to connect with for our next steps. We want to consolidate our position as a company that is developing a therapy that responds to biomarkers.”

The company is currently pursuing a three-pronged strategy—to offer a systemic oncolytic therapy using their newly patented oncolytic virus platform, to use a modified virus to create vaccines for cancer and infectious diseases, and to develop a delivery system for gene therapy. 

Pai added, “As the third member of the team to join, my role is focused on technology. I’m using all the existing data I can gather about cancer to identify the indications or cancer types that might present the best target for the assets Omios can offer.”

Pai further explained that Omios is deliberately pursuing a lean model. “We are using data to derisk and select our indications as much as we can and combining that with our clinician partners who understand the real pain points and unmet needs. Together we choose the right indications where our oncolytic viruses are most likely to succeed and benefit. Our oncolytic viruses will essentially be tested and validated by clinicians and oncologists in the selected indications facilitating a faster and derisked path towards therapeutic development.”

“Much of what we are doing now is active fundraising,” said Pourchet. “It’s hard to do much without it. We are very mindful of our expenses. That said, we are investing in a great patent agent. We want to protect our ideas and our product before starting collaborations with clinical cancer centers or biotech partners. Looking back, some of the best advice we got was from a CEO that went through a similar process; he advised us to keep our team small and work with the best. It’s worth to take the time to do that right.”

“Cancer is the general term, but it’s really a collection of diseases that are very different from each other,” added Pai. “They all have similar weaknesses, but if you talk to any oncologist, you will hear each one has different treatments. We are the first oncolytic virus company that has identified biomarkers to help us select patients that will be responsive to our technology. We are looking at every kind of cancer population, not only to find patients but to estimate the market demand for our drug development strategy.” 

Omios recently closed a pre-seed/seed round led by venture Capital firm FuturePlay and the NYU Langone Health seed fund. The company has expanded its research and development dedicated to understanding indications and reducing risk. They are also in talks with two biopharmaceutical companies aligned with their business model of co-development and early licensing.

“We are feeling the momentum forward, and our progress truly validates the learnings and strategies we developed while participating in NY I-Corps and Empire Corps SBIR/STTR programs,” said Pourchet.