AstraZeneca and Heptares collaborate
To investigate G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs)
AstraZeneca and Heptares Therapeutics, a drug discovery firm based in Welwyn Garden City in the UK, have entered a four-year collaboration focused on the discovery and development of new medicines targeting G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).
GPCRs are among the most important family of proteins found in the human body, yet they become highly unstable when removed from their natural membrane-bound environments. This instability has prevented pharmaceutical researchers from understanding GPCR structures and has hampered efforts to design medicines that work on GPCR targets.
Under the terms of the agreement, AstraZeneca will have worldwide commercial rights to product candidates emerging from the collaboration.
Heptares will receive an upfront US$6.25m cash fee plus research funding and milestone payments. The firm will also receive royalties on sales of all products discovered through the joint research.
The deal brings together Heptares’ GPCR discovery expertise and proprietary technologies, including its StaR technology, which engineers stabilised receptors allowing GPCRs to be investigated, with AstraZeneca’s biopharmaceutical discovery, development and commercial capabilities.
The research will focus on a number of specific GPCR targets linked to central nervous system/pain, cardiovascular/metabolic and inflammatory disorders from projects in AstraZeneca’s small and large molecule portfolio, including projects from AstraZeneca’s biologics unit, MedImmune. The research will be the starting point for drug discovery by producing the first stabilised forms of GPCRs in their natural pharmacological conformation.
Heptares and AstraZeneca will engage their respective discovery teams, compound libraries, and other discovery technologies for the purposes of initial screening and lead identification. Results will be pooled and the best leads further optimised collaboratively. AstraZeneca will then select pre-clinical, small and large molecule candidates and will be solely responsible for preclinical and clinical development.
‘Our work will focus on a range of different diseases across our small and large molecule portfolio with the goal of discovering innovative treatments for patients in areas of medical need,’ said Martin Mackay, AstraZeneca’s president of r&d.
Malcolm Weir, ceo of Heptares, added: ‘This alliance with AstraZeneca illustrates the broad power and scalability of the Heptares technology to generate novel drug candidates in regions of GPCR space that were previously regarded as closed to pharmaceutical discovery.’