Japan’s So­sei Hep­tares is stack­ing up key part­ners. On Tues­day, the Tokyo-based com­pa­ny said it had joined forces with Roche’s Genen­tech to de­vel­op med­i­cines that mod­u­late G pro­tein-cou­pled re­cep­tors (GPCR), an en­trenched class of in­te­gral cell mem­brane pro­teins found in cells and tis­sues across the body.

Shinichi Tamu­ra So­sei Hep­tares

The GPCR fam­i­ly in­cludes re­cep­tors that are re­spon­si­ble for the recog­ni­tion of light, taste, odors, hor­mones, pain and neu­ro­trans­mit­ters, among oth­er things — mak­ing it a pop­u­lar tar­get for drug de­vel­op­ment. About a third of ex­ist­ing med­i­cines tar­get GPCR — but about 224 of the rough­ly 400 re­cep­tors are still un­ex­plored, So­sei said.

Sci­en­tists have found chal­leng­ing map­ping the struc­ture of GPCRs when they are iso­lat­ed from the cell mem­brane has proved dif­fi­cult as they are typ­i­cal­ly un­sta­ble in iso­la­tion. The com­pa­ny — which re­in­stat­ed founder Shinichi Tamu­ra as CEO to re­place GSK vet­er­an Pe­ter Bains at the helm late last year — is armed with tech­nol­o­gy that is en­gi­neered to ex­tri­cate the GPCR struc­ture from cell mem­branes while re­tain­ing its orig­i­nal three-di­men­sion­al in­tegri­ty, en­abling the gen­er­a­tion of “small mol­e­cules, pep­tides and ther­a­peu­tic an­ti­bod­ies tar­get­ing chal­leng­ing or pre­vi­ous­ly un­drug­gable GPCRs.”

Pe­ter Bains

The promise of So­sei’s tech­nol­o­gy has lured a num­ber of il­lus­tri­ous part­ners with deep pock­ets — this fund­ing helps fu­el the com­pa­ny’s in­ter­nal pipeline.

So­sei, which ac­quired UK-based Hep­tares’ GPCR plat­form in a $400 mil­lion deal back in 2015, has a Phase II pro­gram for the symp­to­matic treat­ment of Alzheimer’s dis­ease with Al­ler­gan $AGN, and a slate of im­muno-on­col­o­gy drugs in the pipeline with As­traZeneca $AZN. It al­so counts No­var­tis, Pfiz­er, Dai­ichi-Sankyo, Pep­tiDream, Kymab and Mor­phoSys as its part­ners.

Un­der the new deal, Genen­tech has nom­i­nat­ed mul­ti­ple GPCR tar­gets. Mal­colm Weir, So­sei Hep­tares’ chief R&D of­fi­cer, said he was not at lib­er­ty to dis­close the tar­gets, but of­fered that they are broad­ly de­signed to ad­dress “dis­ease ar­eas of high un­met need,” in an in­ter­view with End­points News.

Mal­colm Weir So­sei Hep­tares

Weir said the com­pa­ny is look­ing to do more deals. “We were found­ed in 2007, and twelve years lat­er we’re do­ing big­ger and bet­ter deals. Fun­da­men­tal­ly, the plat­form con­tin­ues to evolve…we’ve adopt­ed Cryo-elec­tron mi­croscopy re­cent­ly.”

Cryo-elec­tron mi­croscopy is a tech­nique de­signed to dis­cern three-di­men­sion­al in­for­ma­tion about pro­tein struc­tures at the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el — it was pi­o­neered by Hep­tares founder Richard Hen­der­son who won the No­bel Prize in Chem­istry 2017 for his work. Hen­der­son, along with Weir, Fiona Mar­shall and Chris Tate found­ed Hep­tares.

Un­der the Genen­tech deal, So­sei Hep­tares is el­i­gi­ble to get $26 mil­lion in up­front and near-term pay­ments, in ad­di­tion to fu­ture mile­stone pay­ments that may ex­ceed $1 bil­lion, as well as po­ten­tial roy­al­ties.

So­cial im­age: Tokyo, Shut­ter­stock

Over the past 10 years I’ve made a point of getting to know the Golden Triangle and the special role the UK biopharma industry plays there in drug development. The concentration of world class research institutes, some of the most accomplished scientists I’ve ever seen at work and a rising tide of global investment cash leaves an impression that there’s much, much more to come as biotech hubs are birthed and nurtured.

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