Editor’s Note: This interview was conducted at #Bio2018. Please pardon the background noise.

Manu Nair, Vice President of Technology Ventures at Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF) discusses his group’s focus on building partnerships with industry that advance the research in OMRF’s laboratories. OMRF was founded as a non-profit organization in 1946 with the mission of conducting basic biomedical research to help people live longer, healthier lives. OMFR’sd scientists are dedicated to understanding and curing human disease and focus on such critical research areas as lupus, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers at OMRF made discoveries that proved crucial to the creation of the protease inhibition cocktails that have added decades to the lives of patients suffering from HIV/AIDS. OMRF discoveries have given birth to a drug to treat children suffering from a life-threatening deficiency of protein C. Work in our labs also led to the creation of Soliris, the first and only treatment for a rare blood disorder known as PNH. A drug with OMRF roots became the first drug licensed under the European Union’s centralized procedure.