Sosei and PharmEnable extend neurological disease drugs hunt

Japanese BioPharma company Sosei Heptares and Cambridge drug discovery firm PharmEnable Therapeutics have expanded a collaboration to apply their respective technologies to combat neurological diseases.

Their alliance is designed to drive novel drug discovery for a second neurological disease target.  

Sosei Heptares, which has research facilities in Cambridge, is known for its expertise in receptor protein structure determination, Structure-Based Drug Design and translational development. 

PharmEnable will apply its proprietary AI-enabled medicinal chemistry platform (chemUNIVERSE) to design highly specific drug leads for further development.

Expanding their 2021 agreement, the companies will jointly conduct and share the costs of the discovery and the development programme and co-own any resulting products equally. 

The companies are already exploiting their complementary capabilities in an ongoing collaboration focused on an initial target receptor, where they have identified promising small molecules with a new binding mode and novel chemotype.

Dr Matt Barnes, President of Sosei group company Heptares Therapeutics and head of UK R & D, said: “Based on our experience working on our initial collaboration target, PharmEnable’s proprietary AI platform has demonstrated a level of success that supports us extending our collaboration. We look forward to applying our SBDD expertise along with PharmEnable’s novel chemistry to further identify high quality molecules.”

Dr. Hannah Sore, founder and CEO of PharmEnable, added: “We are excited to be expanding our partnership with Sosei Heptares to include an additional target. We have demonstrated the complementarity of our platform and Sosei Heptares’ structural insights while working on our first target and we look forward to continuing to work together and applying our technologies to develop life-changing medicines for neurological disease.”

PharmEnable designs high quality novel chemistry to develop highly potent, selective and orally bioavailable new medicines. The company’s proprietary drug discovery platform integrates advanced medicinal chemistry expertise and cutting-edge AI/computational methods to unlock challenging biological targets and deliver highly effective therapies for diseases with significant unmet clinical need. It’s backed by MP Healthcare Venture Management (venture arm of Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Group) and a syndicate of experienced life science investors.

Tokyo-headquartered Sosei Heptares is a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company focused on bringing life-changing medicines based on world-class science to patients globally. 

It is advancing a broad and deep pipeline of novel medicines created using its world-leading GPCR-targeted StaR® technology and structure-based drug design platform across multiple therapeutic areas, including neurology, immunology, gastroenterology, and inflammatory diseases. 

It has established multiple value-generating partnerships with world-leading biopharmaceutical companies including AbbVie, Genentech (Roche), GSK, Lilly, Neurocrine Biosciences, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi and Takeda.