November 10th, 2023
Tokyo, Japan, Cambridge, UK and New York, USA – 10 November 2023 – Sosei Group Corporation (“Sosei Heptares”; TSE: 4565), the international biopharmaceutical company, and Kallyope, a clinical stage biotechnology company discovering and developing novel, oral small-molecule therapeutics for diseases with high unmet need, today announced the successful identification, validation, and nomination of a first G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) target to enter a therapeutic discovery program for gastrointestinal diseases.
This is the first scientific milestone stemming from the strategic drug discovery collaboration between the two companies announced in 2022. The collaboration aims to leverage Sosei Heptares’ GPCR Diversified Compound Library and GPCR expertise and the innovative Kallyope Klarity™ platform, which combines single-cell sequencing, circuit mapping, computational biology, and enteroid phenotypic screening. The collaborating teams at Sosei Heptares and Kallyope intend to progress the nominated target into a fully supported structure-based drug discovery program as well as continuing to identify additional gastrointestinal targets for future programs.
Matt Barnes, President of Heptares Therapeutics and Head of UK R&D, commented: “This first important milestone with Kallyope has been rapidly achieved through the combination of our respective world-leading technologies, expertise, and focus on discovering novel therapeutics targeting unmet needs in gastrointestinal diseases. It is exciting to see tangible outputs from our Target Identification and Validation strategy across our portfolio of collaborations with innovative companies, like Kallyope. Advancing novel programs like this into the drug discovery phase is important to enrich our early pipeline and provides opportunities for developing future medicines to address unmet medical need.”
“This achievement further confirms the effectiveness of Kallyope’s unique target discovery platform and scientific expertise, and the value of collaboration with the GPCR platform and expertise of Sosei Heptares,” said Jay Galeota, President and CEO, Kallyope. “Our Klarity platform’s broad set of integrated technologies and insights allows us to understand communication between the gut, brain, and other organs in a fundamentally new way that, together with the leading compound library and structural biology capabilities that Sosei Heptares has built, can lead to the development of therapeutic interventions that represent important steps forward in treating gastrointestinal diseases, reducing suffering, and improving human health.”