Nxera Pharma’s Partner Centessa Initiates Phase 2 Trial of a Novel Orexin Receptor 2 Agonist
Nxera Pharma Co., Ltd. recently announced Centessa Pharmaceuticals has initiated a Phase 2 trial of ORX750, an investigational, orally administered, highly potent and selective orexin receptor 2 (OX2R) agonist for the treatment of narcolepsy type 1 (NT1), narcolepsy type 2 (NT2), and idiopathic hypersomnia.
The achievement of this milestone results in a payment of $3.5 million to Nxera pursuant to its research collaboration with Centessa. This will be recognized as revenue in Q4 FY2024. The clinical development milestone was reported in Centessa’s Q3 Financial Results statement on 12 November 2024 – the full announcement can be found by clicking here.
ORX750 was designed using Nxera technology to directly target the underlying pathophysiology of orexin neuron loss in NT1, with potential applicability to NT2, idiopathic hypersomnia, and other sleep-wake disorders with normal orexin levels.
The ORX750 program originated from a strategic co-investment between Nxera and Medicxi, the life sciences investment firm, in 2019, which subsequently resulted in Nxera owning 929,353 shares in Centessa Pharmaceuticals (valued, as of today’s date, at approximately $15 million). Nxera stands to benefit from the potential appreciation of its equity holding in Centessa and also from further milestone payments and royalty income tied to the successful development of ORX750.
Matt Barnes, EVP, President of Nxera Pharma UK and Head of R&D, said “This clinical development milestone with ORX750 is an important example of how our unique technology can be deployed to generate novel molecules with the potential to address unmet clinical needs. It also highlights the progress being made across the 12 clinical-stage programs in our extensive in-house and partnered portfolio. It is exciting to see this portfolio mature as it advances, and we look forward to reporting future milestones.”
Nxera Pharma (formerly Sosei Heptares) is a technology powered biopharma company, in pursuit of new specialty medicines to improve the lives of patients with unmet needs in Japan and globally.
In addition to several products being commercialized in Japan, we are advancing an extensive pipeline of over 30 active programs from discovery through to late clinical stage internally and in partnership with leading pharma and biotech companies. This pipeline is focused on addressing major unmet needs in some of the fastest-growing areas of medicine across neurology, GI and immunology, metabolic disorders and rare diseases, and leverages the power of our unique and industry leading GPCR-targeted structure-based drug discovery NxWave platform to provide a sustainable source of best- or first-in-class candidates.
Nxera employs over 350 talented people at key locations in Tokyo and Osaka (Japan), London and Cambridge (UK), Basel (Switzerland) and Seoul (South Korea) and is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (ticker: 4565). For more information, visit www.nxera.life.
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