Company Description

Momentum Biotechnologies was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Billerica, Massachusetts, United States. The company was established and is led by Can Ozbal, PhD, founder and CEO, who brings deep expertise in mass spectrometry-based analytical technologies for drug discovery. Momentum operates as a privately held CRO with investment backing from Care Equity, a healthcare-focused private equity firm.

The company’s core focus is the application of native mass spectrometry and related technologies to accelerate small molecule and therapeutic lead discovery, with particular depth in affinity-selection mass spectrometry (ASMS), covalent ligand screening, and quantitative proteomics. Its proposition centres on delivering rapid, analytically rigorous answers to pressing drug discovery questions — spanning target identification, hit finding, lead characterisation, and biomarker discovery — using proprietary technology platforms developed in-house.

In March 2025, Momentum completed the acquisition of OmicScouts GmbH, a Munich-based CRO and established leader in mass spectrometry-based proteomics, which now operates as OmicScouts, a Momentum Biotechnologies Company. The acquisition extended Momentum’s service portfolio into chemoproteomics and system-wide proteomics, added a Munich-based European facility, and brought OmicScouts’ co-founder and CEO Hannes Hahne, PhD, into Momentum’s executive leadership team as President. The combined entity is able to support clients from high-throughput screening through to downstream cell-based and preclinical assays — a workflow previously fragmented across multiple vendors.

Momentum serves pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients globally, with its client base spanning established multinational pharmaceutical companies and innovative biotechs across the US and Europe.

Key Products and Services

Screening Services

• Affinity-Selection Mass Spectrometry (ASMS) — high-throughput identification of reversible small molecule binders to protein targets; applicable to a wide range of target classes including soluble proteins, membrane proteins, and protein complexes
• Covalent Ligand Screening — identification and prioritisation of covalent therapeutics using intact MS and peptide mapping; including covalent ligandability profiling across the proteome (CysScout™ platform)
• Compound Management and Chemical Libraries — management and provision of compound libraries to support screening campaigns

Proteomics and Chemoproteomics (via OmicScouts)

• Chemoproteomics — activity-based protein profiling and competitive ABPP to identify on- and off-target interactions across the proteome in cellular or in vivo contexts; supports target engagement, selectivity, and mechanism-of-action studies
• Quantitative Global Proteomics — TMT-labelled and label-free proteomic profiling to measure protein abundance, post-translational modifications, and drug-induced proteomic changes at a system-wide level
• Targeted Proteomics — quantification of specific proteins, biomarkers, and pathway components with high sensitivity and selectivity
• Protein Turnover Analysis (TurnoverScout™ / Protein Turnover Atlas™) — characterisation of protein stability and degradation rates; relevant to targeted protein degrader programmes

Proprietary Technology Platforms

• TargetScout™ — target identification from phenotypic screens
• KinomeScout™ — kinome-wide selectivity profiling for kinase inhibitor programmes
• SignalingScout™ — phosphoproteomics for signalling pathway analysis
• UbiScout™ — ubiquitination site mapping supporting protein degradation biology
• PlasmaScout™ — biomarker quantification in plasma and biofluids
• QuantScout™ — targeted quantification of proteins and metabolites
• NucleoBeads™ — enrichment tools supporting DNA- and RNA-targeting drug programmes
• PhotoTargetScout™ — photoaffinity labelling-based target identification
• SurfaceScout™ — surface proteomics for cell-surface target discovery
• DecryptM — drug response proteomics and phosphoproteomics

Adjacent Scientific Capabilities

• Biochemistry and Chemical Biology — biochemical assay development and execution
• Cell and Molecular Biology — cell-based assay support and mechanistic studies
• Computational Biology — bioinformatic analysis and data interpretation in support of MS-based datasets

Therapeutic Area and Modality Coverage

Therapeutic areas served include oncology, immunology, neuroscience, metabolic disease, infectious disease, and rare diseases. Modalities supported include small molecules, covalent drugs, molecular glues, targeted protein degraders, kinase inhibitors, DNA- and RNA-targeting drugs, oligonucleotide therapeutics, and radiotherapeutics.

Momentum Biotechnologies occupies a well-defined niche as a mass spectrometry-specialist CRO operating at the earliest and most analytically demanding stages of drug discovery. Its differentiation rests on the depth and breadth of its proprietary MS-based technology platforms, which span target identification through to cellular mechanism-of-action studies — a coverage that few CROs of comparable size can match. The 2025 acquisition of OmicScouts was strategically significant: it extended Momentum’s capabilities from hit finding into downstream proteomics and chemoproteomics, created geographic presence in Europe, and meaningfully closed the service gap between biochemical screening and preclinical cell biology. The combined entity is well positioned to serve sponsors developing modalities — such as molecular glues, covalent drugs, and targeted protein degraders — where conventional biochemical screening approaches are insufficient and where mass spectrometry-based methods have become the standard of practice for target engagement and selectivity profiling.