HISTORY
From an MIT lab to the NASDAQ stock exchange
Momenta was founded in 2001 based on technology developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the precise sequencing of complex sugar molecules. This original technology platform and the resulting improvements have driven us to where we are today. We have rapidly grown from a small, development-stage start-up to a public company with a leadership position in the analysis and design of complex products.
The initial research into the characterization of sugar molecules was performed by two of our founders, Ram Sasisekharan, Ph.D., Professor of Biological Engineering, MIT, and Ganesh Venkataraman, Ph.D., now our Chief Scientific Officer. Sasisekharan, a molecular biologist, collaborated initially with Dr. Robert Langer, an established professor at MIT, to overcome many technical obstacles to create the first heparinase, an enzyme that cuts sugar sequences into smaller components. Dr. Venkataraman then started collaborating with Sasisekharan, looking at quantitative approaches for capturing the diversity of complex sugars.
Their early efforts to explore the biological roles and diversity of sugars were constrained by the absence of tools to fully analyze complex sugars. Sasisekharan and Venkataraman saw this challenge as an opportunity. So they devised a collection of enzymes and chemicals that served to cut the sugar sequences at precise locations, developed improvements to analytical methodologies, and created a numerical system to describe the many permutations of building blocks contained in complex sugars. This early work forms the foundation of our sequencing technology.
Today, our scientific founders remain very active with Momenta. Dr. Venkataraman oversees all of our scientific programs and research along with a core group of scientists who helped conduct the original research at MIT.
Momenta presently has over 150 employees and occupies over 75,000 square feet of lab and office space in the Kendall Square area of Cambridge, Massachusetts.