Sosei Heptares & Verily to Collaborate to Generate Novel Drug Candidates Against GPCR Targets for Immune-Mediated Diseases

Sosei Group Corporation and Verily recently announced they have entered into a strategic research collaboration. The research agreement brings together the complementary capabilities of Verily’s immune profiling and Sosei Heptares’ G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) structure-based drug design.

The collaboration aims to:

• Advance the understanding of GPCR biology in immune cells, particularly in the fields of immunology, gastroenterology, immuno-oncology and other disorders with immunoprotective or immunopathogenic mechanisms
• Prioritize and validate GPCR targets with strong potential as drug targets
• Discover and develop novel drug candidates that modulate these targets

Verily’s proprietary Immune Profiler is a next generation immune mapping platform that combines high-resolution molecular phenotyping performed in Verily’s labs and advanced computational analysis techniques to generate insights into immune system functions. It will be used to identify GPCR targets that represent new opportunities to modulate immune cell function and ameliorate disease pathology.

The companies will collaborate to prioritize the GPCR targets using Sosei Heptares’ world-leading StaR® (stabilized receptor) platform and structure-based drug design expertise, with the goal of generating lead molecules for further development or out-licensing.

Matt Barnes, Vice President, Drug Discovery at Sosei Heptares, commented “We are extremely pleased to collaborate with Verily on this exciting and expansive project, which aims to identify GPCRs expressed in immune cells, enhance our understanding of their functional relevance and prosecute as potential drug targets in immunological diseases. Immunology is a key area of focus for Sosei Heptares and this new collaboration brings together two world-class technologies and teams with the skills and expertise to define key GPCRs as targets for the discovery of new medicines that could have significant impact on patients with immune-based diseases worldwide.”

Jessica Mega, Chief Medical & Scientific Officer, Co-Founder, Verily, added “We recognize Sosei Heptares as a leader in targeting GPCRs, one of the most valuable families of protein targets to date. Our complementary expertise in data-driven prioritization of novel therapeutic targets and expertise in GPCR drug development make for a perfect match to accelerate the development of future therapeutic options for patients suffering with immune-mediated disease.”

We are an international biopharmaceutical group focused on the discovery and early development of new medicines originating from our proprietary GPCR-targeted StaR technology and structure-based drug design platform capabilities. We are advancing a broad and deep pipeline of novel medicines across multiple therapeutic areas, including neurology, immunology, gastroenterology and inflammatory diseases.

We have established partnerships with some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies and multiple emerging technology companies, including AbbVie, AstraZeneca, Biohaven, Genentech (Roche), GSK, Neurocrine Biosciences, Novartis, Pfizer, Takeda and Verily. Sosei Heptares is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan with corporate and R&D facilities in Cambridge, UK.

Verily is a subsidiary of Alphabet focused on life sciences and healthcare. Verily’s mission is to make the world’s health data useful so that people enjoy healthier lives. Verily develops tools and devices to collect, organize and activate health data, and creates interventions to prevent and manage disease. Verily partners with leading life sciences, medical device, and government organizations, using deep hardware, software, scientific, and healthcare expertise to enable faster development, meaningful advances, and deployment at scale. For more information, visit verily.com.