Heptares to Acquire G7 Therapeutics to Extend Leadership in GPCR-Focused Drug Discovery and Development

LONDON and ZURICH, November 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

Heptares Therapeutics ("Heptares"), the wholly-owned subsidiary of Sosei Group Corporation (TSE Mothers Index: 4565), announces it has signed a share purchase agreement that will allow the acquisition of 100% in G7 Therapeutics, a privately held drug discovery and development company based in Switzerland, for CHF 12 million cash. The strategic acquisition broadens and strengthens Heptares' intellectual property and platform for structure-based drug design and development focused on G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), a superfamily of receptors linked to a wide range of human diseases. The combination of Heptares' and G7 Therapeutics' platforms is anticipated to increase Heptares' R&D productivity in terms of generating stabilised GPCRs and high quality GPCR structures that underpin discovery efforts for its proprietary pipeline and for partners.

G7 Therapeutics has developed proprietary approaches for stabilising GPCRs (called SaBRE and CHESS), which are different and highly complementary to the StaR® platform developed by Heptares. SaBRE and CHESS are of particular use where the target GPCR is present in very low numbers on cells and the methods are particularly powerful in the numbers of stabilizing mutations that can be identified in a short time for rapidly generating high quality GPCRs.

Upon completion of the acquisition, G7 Therapeutics will become a wholly owned Zurich-based subsidiary of Heptares and will be renamed Heptares Zurich. The subsidiary will be led by Fiona Marshall, Chief Scientific Officer at Heptares and at Sosei.

Dr Marshall commented: "We are delighted to complete the acquisition G7 Therapeutics. We believe that the platform G7 has developed is truly complementary to our StaR platform and will expand our capacity to explore more of the 'GPCRome' to deliver novel candidates against targeted GPCRs for both our proprietary pipeline and for partnered programmes. We look forward to welcoming its highly talented team into Heptares and further extending our leadership advantage in GPCR-focused SBDD."

Carlo Bertozzi, CEO of G7 Therapeutics, added: "Heptares has an impressive track record of technology development resulting in a world-leading platform that has generated multiple product opportunities targeting many GPCR targets across diverse disease areas. We are excited to combine our platforms and capabilities through this transaction and to further advance GPCR-targeted drug discovery, an area of significant untapped potential."

Peter Bains, CEO of Sosei, said: "Approximately 30 percent of approved medicines in pharmaceutical company portfolios today act by modulating GPCR activity, making GPCRs one of, if not the most important target families for drug discovery and a major pillar upon which the global industry has been built. Heptares has already established a world-leading position in this area, building a diverse pipeline of proprietary candidates as well as attracting major pharma company partners. This acquisition is a further step towards delivering Sosei's strategy by consolidating and extending this leadership position, and expanding our capacity to generate a sustainable pipeline of new drug candidates for development ourselves in select disease areas, and for our partners."

Notes to Editors 

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, Kymab, MedImmune, MorphoSys, Pfizer and Teva.

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