Therapeutics · Chronic liver disease
Ochre Bio
An Oxford company that designs RNA drugs and tests them in whole human donor livers kept alive on machines. Two large pharma partnerships are signed and 22 patent applications are on file. As of September 2026 no Ochre therapy appears in any trial registry.
A liver, alive on a bench, for a week
A human liver that nobody could transplant sits in a perfusion circuit in Birmingham. Warm blood at 36 degrees runs through it. A haemofilter scrubs the waste. Sodium lactate goes in as both food and a live readout of whether the hepatocytes are still working.
In October 2024 a University of Birmingham team, with a co-author listing an Ochre-Bio Ltd affiliation, published the protocol in Communications Medicine. The result, in the paper’s own words: “All five human livers perfused with the developed protocol showed preserved function with a median perfusion time of 168 h (range 120-184 h), with preserved viability throughout.”
One hundred and sixty eight hours is a week. That is the premise of the company. Hold a human liver alive and functioning for a week and you can dose it with a candidate RNA drug and read the answer out of human tissue rather than a mouse. Ochre calls its New York site “the largest ex-vivo machine perfusion laboratory of human donor livers in the world.”
The gap it is aimed at
The company website states the purpose in one line: “Ochre exists to end the need for liver transplants.”
The vacuum it is aiming at is real and narrow. In March 2024 the FDA approved Madrigal’s resmetirom, sold as Rezdiffra, the first therapy for metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis. As MedCity News noted, that approval does not cover MASH patients with stage 4 fibrosis, the point at which the liver is cirrhotic and a transplant is the only recourse. Boehringer and Ochre both say no approved medicine exists for disease at that stage.
Ochre’s wager is that the answer is not more fat reduction but regeneration: switching the liver’s own repair machinery back on. Wills, writing a 2025 perspective in Frontiers in Gastroenterology, surveyed the same field and closed by asking whether fibrosis reversal should be the only goal.
A bookmaker’s grandson and a doctor with a treehouse
Jack O’Meara grew up in Athlone, Ireland, and took his first job at 13 in the family bookmaking business. He read biomedical engineering at Galway, took the ESTEEM masters at Notre Dame, and worked on Zolgensma approvals at AveXis.
Quin Wills is a South African trained physician who moved into genomics and had spent close to two decades on liver disease before the two met through Entrepreneurs First, the London company builder. O’Meara has said he was in Tanzania and Wills was finishing a treehouse in Costa Rica during their first calls. They incorporated Ochre Bio Ltd on November 4, 2019. GEN has reported that the name comes from one of the three stop codons in the genetic code.
Money, then partners, then a hard turn
Khosla Ventures led a $9.6M seed in June 2021 with Backed VC, Apollo Health Ventures, Selvedge, Hoxton and Hermes-Epitek. The release described a “full stack GalNAc-siRNA development process.” A $30M Series A followed in October 2022, adding LifeForce Capital, AixThera, LifeLink and EIT Health. Nessan Bermingham, founding CEO of Intellia, joined the board.
Then the pharma money arrived. On April 22, 2024 Ochre announced a multi-year, multi-target collaboration with Boehringer Ingelheim: up to $35 million in upfront and near-term research milestones, with an overall value that could exceed $1 billion if clinical, regulatory and commercial milestones land. Seven weeks later GSK signed a multi-year data licence worth up to $37.5 million.
Five months after that the founding CEO left. Ochre announced on September 16, 2024 that O’Meara had stepped down; Companies House records his directorship as terminated on August 13, 2024. Eliot Forster ran the company as executive chairperson until Wills took the title in June 2025. Wills has described 2024 as the year of the pivot: “In 2024, we fundamentally shifted our focus from early-stage liver disease to tackling fibrosis and regeneration in late-stage disease.” He added that the change reached about a third of the company.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Perfusion platform | Four PubMed papers carry an Ochre-Bio Ltd affiliation, all on perfusion method, with the University of Birmingham. Sci Rep, Nov 2023: nine declined livers, N-acetylcysteine extends runs. Commun Med, Oct 2024: five livers, median 168 h. Transplantation, Feb 2026: seven livers, 87 to 184 h. | Public record |
| RNA therapy data | No peer-reviewed paper reporting efficacy of an Ochre RNA candidate in perfused human liver was found as of Sep 23, 2026. The published work validates the vessel, not the drugs. | Not found |
| Patents | 22 GB applications name Ochre Bio Ltd, filed Dec 16, 2022 to Jul 3, 2025. Titles move from targets for liver disease to antisense and small activating nucleic acid molecules. No grant and no published international application appeared in the same search. | Public record |
| Boehringer deal | Announced by Ochre via Business Wire, with Boehringer’s global head of cardiometabolic diseases research quoted, and covered by Fierce Biotech, BioSpace, GEN and MedCity News. No standalone release on Boehringer’s own site was found. | Company release |
| GSK deal | Signed June 2024, up to $37.5m. Research phase declared complete Nov 18, 2025 and converted to a multi-year co-exclusive licence, with a named GSK executive quoted. | Partner-stated |
| Clinical stage | No ClinicalTrials.gov registration, no FDA 510(k) or PMA and no NIH award was found. The pipeline page lists four programmes by mechanism and indication with no candidate names. | Public record |
| Stated timelines | O’Meara told BioEscalator “we hope to get into a transplant trial by the beginning of 2023 as our stake in the ground.” In July 2023 he told EU-Startups the company would “plan to submit our first clinical trial application at the end of 2024.” Neither is visible on the record. | Differs from the record |
| Scale and cash | Ochre Bio Ltd reported average monthly employees of 37 in 2025 and 33 in 2024, cash of £4,742,065 at Dec 31, 2025 against £5,799,466 a year earlier, net liabilities of £3,721,489 and accumulated losses of £31,003,054. Unaudited. | Public record |
| Total funding | Wills wrote in May 2025: “We’ve raised over $110M to date.” Announced equity is $39.6M. The remainder is partnership ceiling, not banked cash. | Company-stated |
Read plainly: the perfusion platform is real, published and independently co-authored, and two large pharma companies have paid for access to what it produces. What has not appeared in any public record is a molecule. Seven years in, with the founding CEO gone and the focus reset to late-stage disease, the company is still upstream of its first regulatory filing.
What to watch
- A clinical trial application or an IND. Every stated timeline since 2021 has slipped, so the first registry entry is the event that settles the question.
- The Boehringer collaboration reaching a target nomination, where the milestone payments past the first $35 million begin.
- Published international patent applications, whose specifications would show which genes Ochre is going after.
- The next Companies House accounts, due September 2027. UK cash fell about £1.06m in 2025 and deferred partnership income is being drawn down.
- A Series B, or the absence of one. No equity round has been announced since October 2022.
In their words
“Combining this with direct-to-human testing in human livers maintained on machines is a step-change for a field plagued by clinical failures.”
Quin Wills, co-founder and CSO, seed round release, June 2021 · Company release
“In the future, we have a goal to directly regenerate organs in patients, removing the need for organ transplants altogether.”
Quin Wills, Series A release, October 2022 · Company release
“They have the potential to be one of the most impactful companies in the field of liver and cardiometabolic disease.”
Nessan Bermingham, operating partner, Khosla Ventures, October 2022 · Investor
“Ochre Bio brings to the table unique and exciting capabilities in liver disease research.”
Søren Tullin, global head of cardiometabolic diseases research, Boehringer Ingelheim, April 2024 · Partner-stated
“As the company heads into its next phase, the time has come for me to pass the baton as CEO.”
Jack O’Meara, co-founder, leadership change release, September 2024 · Company release
“I could not be more thrilled to now be steering our therapies towards the clinic.”
Quin Wills, on being appointed CEO, June 2025 · Company release
“Our collaboration with Ochre has generated data that supports our deepened understanding of human biology and disease.”
Kaivan Khavandi, SVP, GSK, November 2025 · Partner-stated
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordOCHRE BIO LTD, company 12294967, officers and filings
- Public recordAccounts, year ended 31 December 2025
- Public recordAccounts, year ended 31 December 2024
- Public recordExtended ex-vivo normothermic machine liver perfusion protocol
- Public recordMASH and the race for liver antifibrotics
- Public record22 patent applications naming Ochre Bio Ltd
- Public recordForm D filings by two Ochre Bio investment vehicles
- IndependentBoehringer signs $1.3B deal with RNA biotech Ochre Bio
- IndependentBoehringer strikes regenerative med deal spanning MASH
- IndependentIrish-founded Ochre Bio raises $30m
- IndependentOchre Bio and GSK complete early research into human liver
- InterviewND Founders Profile #123
- InterviewInterview with Jack O’Meara
- InterviewOchre Bio, addressing the complexities of liver disease
- InterviewOchre Bio company spotlight transcript
- CompanyPartnership with Boehringer Ingelheim announced
- CompanyGSK multi-year data licence agreement
- CompanySeries A and seed financing releases
- CompanyLeadership change and CEO appointment
- CompanyOchre Bio website and pipeline page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
