PharmEnable and Sosei Heptares enter technology collaboration for AI-driven drug discovery against challenging GPCR target

PharmEnable is delighted to announce that we have entered a new partnership with Sosei Heptares. This collaboration will drive a novel drug discovery programme against a challenging G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) target, which is associated with neurological disease.

Sosei Heptares is an international biopharmaceutical group, focused on the discovery and early development of new medicines originating from their world-leading GPCR-targeted StaR® technology and structure-based drug design platform capabilities.

Miles Congreve, Chief Scientific Officer of Sosei Heptares, said: “We have been very impressed with PharmEnable’s technology and approach, which we believe to be highly complementary to our own, offering important synergies for drug discovery on challenging GPCR targets. We are excited to apply these technologies on a peptidergic GPCR target that has proved particularly difficult to drug. We have so far assembled a wealth of structural and ligand-binding information on the target and created several promising molecules but have yet to identify compounds with sufficiently desirable neurological drug-like properties to advance into preclinical studies. Combining our respective technologies and expertise may be the key that unlocks this target and enables the identification of higher quality molecules to progress into preclinical development.”

Dr Hannah Sore, Founder and CEO of PharmEnable, commented: “We are excited to partner with Sosei Heptares on this challenging and complex GPCR target. We have proven the strength of our platform in tapping unexplored parts of the chemical universe to find novel and specific hits for currently undruggable targets. Combining our platform with the technology and structural insights developed by Sosei Heptares should enable us to generate several potential hits, and to establish our pipeline of candidate molecules for the treatment of challenging diseases.”.

The collaboration will enhance innovation and development of the next generation of small molecule drugs against the particularly difficult GPCR target. PharmEnable is excited to begin this collaborative project and look forward to working closely with Sosei Heptares.