Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation

The Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation (OMRF), located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institute. Established in 1946, OMRF is dedicated to understanding and developing more effective treatments for human disease. Stephen M. Prescott serves as president of OMRF, which employs more than 500 scientific and administrative staff members.

OMRF’s scientists, who include a member of the National Academy of Sciences, hold more than 700 U.S. and international patents and have spun off 11 biotech companies. Discoveries at OMRF led to Xigris, the first FDA-approved drug for the treatment of severe sepsis, and Ceprotin, a therapy for people suffering from a rare and life-threatening blood disorder known as protein C deficiency. Research at OMRF also identified the enzyme believed responsible for Alzheimer’s disease and laid the groundwork for OncoVue, a breast cancer risk assessment test.

OMRF was chartered in 1946. The next year, Oklahoma Gov. Roy J. Turner launched a fund drive for OMRF that spanned all 77 of Oklahoma’s counties. By May 1949, 7,000 Oklahomans had donated and pledged $2.35 million, and construction of OMRF began.

In the summer of 1949, Sir Alexander Fleming made his first visit to the United States to dedicate OMRF’s yet-to-be-completed building. An estimated 2,500 people attended the ceremonies on July 4 of that year, where Fleming pronounced the future "bright" for what was then, in the Nobel laureate’s words, "just a big hole in the ground."

OMRF opened its doors on Dec. 17, 1950. Since that time, OMRF has grown from 5 principal scientists to 50, and its staff has grown from roughly two dozen employees to more than 500. Securing more than $30 million annually in competitive research grants from the National Institutes of Health and other granting agencies, OMRF is a member of the Association of Independent Research Institutes. Its scientists focus on research in the areas of immunology, cardiovascular biology and diseases of aging.

In 2000, Jordan J.N. Tang and colleagues created an inhibitor that, in vitro, stopped the enzyme thought to cause Alzheimer's disease. The biotechnology company CoMentis has since built on that discovery to create an experimental drug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. In 2007, Tang uncovered a molecular mechanism that links an Alzheimer’s susceptibility gene (known as E4) to the process of disease onset. In OMRF’s free radical biology and aging research program, Robert A. Floyd leads a team of scientists who focus on the mechanisms that cause neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's Parkinson's disease, Huntington's Huntington's disease and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

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