Dr Roger M. Perlmutter Joins Heptares' Board of Directors

WELWYN GARDEN CITY, England and BOSTON, Massachusetts, October 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

Heptares Therapeutics, the leading GPCR drug discovery company, has elected Dr Roger M. Perlmutter, the former Executive Vice President, Research and Development, at Amgen Inc. to its Board of Directors as a Non-executive Director.

Dr Perlmutter was at Amgen from 2001 until his retirement earlier this year. Before this, he was the Executive Vice President of Worldwide Basic Research and Preclinical Development at Merck and Co., which he joined in 1997 from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) where he was Professor and founding Chairman of the Department of Immunology.

John Berriman, Heptares' Chairman, said: "Heptares has made enormous progress in recent years, developing its GPCR-focused drug discovery platform and gaining industry validation through several high value deals. We are delighted to welcome Roger to our Board and look forward to benefiting from his extensive US, big biotech and big pharma experience as Heptares advances its pipeline into clinical development."

Dr Perlmutter added: "Heptares has pioneered structure determination in GPCRs, and has used this information to develop leading therapeutic candidates in metabolic and neuropsychiatric disease.  I am eager to help Malcolm Weir and his team translate these impressive assets into novel therapeutics that will make a difference for patients around the world."

About Heptares Therapeutics

Heptares discovers and develops new medicines targeting GPCRs (G protein-coupled receptors), a super-family of drug targets linked to a wide range of human diseases.  Our pharmaceutical partners include Shire, AstraZeneca, MedImmune and Takeda, and we have raised $40M from MVM Life Science Partners, Clarus Ventures, Novartis Venture Fund and Takeda Ventures.

Heptares is pioneering the application of structure-based drug design to the GPCR superfamily of targets and is focused on creating molecules that modulate high-value, yet historically undruggable or challenging, GPCRs.  Our platform incorporates proprietary technologies for engineering stabilised GPCRs in their natural pharmacological conformations, identifying previously unknown chemistries for GPCR protein-drug interactions, and deploying advanced fragment-based approaches to GPCR target space for the first time.

Using this approach, we have generated a broad pipeline of drug candidates for the treatment of serious disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, depression, chronic insomnia, addiction disorders, migraine and diabetes.  For more information about Heptares, please visit http://www.heptares.com.