Heptares' Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Fiona Marshall, Receives 2017 John Daly Lecture Award in Recognition of Her Outstanding Contribution to GPCR Drug Discovery

LONDON and TOKYO, May 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Heptares Therapeutics ("Heptares"), the leading GPCR medicine design and development company and wholly-owned subsidiary of Sosei Group Corporation (TSE Mothers Index: 4565), is proud to announce its Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Fiona Marshall, has received the 2017 John Daly Lecture Award for her outstanding contribution to GPCR drug discovery.

In receiving the prestigious award, Dr Marshall was invited to give the 9th Annual John Daly Memorial Lecture, which took place yesterday at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, USA. During the lecture, Dr Marshall described how the unique GPCR stabilisation technologies developed at Heptares have generated valuable insights to GPCR structure and function, and are yielding novel molecules for development as drugs in many disease areas.

The Award is bestowed annually by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) in memory of John Daly, a former NIH scientist and pioneer in pharmacological research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). Dr Daly introduced many essential tools for pharmacological research and made a significant contribution to the field of GPCRs. After his death in 2008, the NIDDK Intramural Research Program instituted an annual lecture, held in his memory.

Previous John Daly Lecturers include Brian Kobilka of Stanford University and Robert J. Lefkowitz of Duke University, who jointly won the Nobel Prize in 2012 for Chemistry in recognition of their pioneering research studying GPCRs at the molecular and structural level.

Malcolm Weir, Chief Executive Officer of Heptares and Chief R&D Officer at Sosei, said: "Since co-founding Heptares in 2007, Fiona has been instrumental in building the Company's world-leading reputation for GPCR-focused drug discovery. She has led a team that has made many breakthroughs in GPCR structure elucidation that are now being applied to develop new medicines for many diseases. Fiona's nomination to give the John Daly Memorial Lecture is an incredibly well-deserved and timely recognition of her work in the field and all that she has achieved so far."

Fiona Marshall added: "I am delighted and honoured to be recognised personally through this Award. I've had the great fortune to work with some extremely talented people during my career, whose guidance and contributions have been crucial to the direction my research has taken. The success that Heptares has achieved over the past decade is testament to that influence and this award is further recognition of the team's excellent work."

About Heptares Therapeutics 

Heptares is a clinical-stage company creating transformative medicines targeting G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), a superfamily of 375 receptors linked to a wide range of human diseases. Heptares' proprietary StaR® technology and structure-based drug design (SBDD) capabilities enable us to engineer and develop drugs for highly validated, yet historically undruggable or challenging GPCRs. Using this approach, we are building an exciting pipeline of new medicines (small molecules and biologics) with the potential to transform the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, cancer immune-oncology, migraine, addiction, metabolic disease and other indications. We have partnerships for our novel candidates and technologies with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including Allergan, AstraZeneca, Daiichi Sankyo, Kymab, MedImmune, MorphoSys, Pfizer and Teva.

Heptares is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sosei Group Corporation. For more information, please visit www.heptares.com and www.sosei.com.

HEPTARES is a registered trademark in the EU, Switzerland, US and Japan;  

StaR® is a registered trademark in the EU and Japan. 

About Sosei 

Sosei is a biopharmaceutical company originating from Japan but with global presence. Sosei's primary business model is based on identifying novel and/or differentiated product assets or technology platforms and, through supporting these in preclinical and clinical development and establishing commercial partnerships, advancing new medicines to patients worldwide. For more information about Sosei, please visit www.sosei.com.

Contact Information

Citigate Dewe Rogerson (for Heptares)
Mark Swallow, David Dible
+44-(0)-20-7282-2948/2929
heptares@citigatedr.co.uk
   
Heptares Therapeutics Ltd
Malcolm Weir, Chief Executive Officer
+44-(0)-1707-358-629
malcolm.weir@heptares.com
@HeptaresTL