Sosei Heptares, Genentech Announces Research, License Agreement

Sosei Group has entered into a multi-target research collaboration and license agreement with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, to discover and develop novel medicines (new small molecules and/or biologics) that modulate G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) targets of interest to Genentech.

Under the terms of the agreement, the collaboration will combine the proprietary GPCR-focused structure-based drug design capabilities at Sosei Heptares with Genentech's discovery, development and therapeutic area expertise directed towards multiple GPCR targets nominated by Genentech. The nominated targets represent promising new therapeutic intervention points across a range of diseases.

Genentech will be responsible for developing and commercializing potential new medicines for each novel target and will have exclusive global rights to these agents.

Sosei Heptares is eligible to receive $26 million in upfront and near-term payments, in addition to future milestone payments that may exceed $1 billion for achieving pre-specified research, development and commercialization events. Sosei Heptares is also eligible to receive royalty payments on the net sales of potential future medicines resulting from the collaboration.

"Sosei Heptares has strived to collaborate with leaders in the industry who appreciate the potential of combining their extensive drug development and commercialization expertise with our world-leading GPCR structure-based drug design approach to generate and advance new therapeutics across multiple disease areas," Dr. Malcolm Weir, Executive Vice President and Chief R&D Officer of Sosei Heptares, said. "We are therefore delighted to enter this new partnership with Genentech, one of the most innovative companies in the biopharmaceutical industry, and excited to see what the combination of our respective capabilities can deliver."

"We believe GPCRs are an important target class that play a role in many serious diseases. Sosei Heptares brings truly unique capabilities to enable and accelerate GPCR drug discovery. We look forward to collaborating with the Sosei Heptares team to hopefully bring novel GPCR-targeted medicines to patients as quickly as possible," James Sabry, M.D., Ph.D., Global Head of Pharma Partnering, Roche, said.

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