Oxygen Healthcare (O2h) Announces Expanded Chemistry Collaboration With Heptares Therapeutics

CAMBRIDGE, England, July 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

Executives from O2h (Cambridge, UK) and Heptares Therapeutics (Welwyn Garden City, UK) signed an agreement to substantially increase the number of FTE chemists provided by O2h to support discovery programmes at Heptares.

Dr Miles Congreve, Head of Chemistry at Heptares said, "O2h has been a valuable partner for Heptares and we are happy to further extend our synthetic chemistry team to include a full lab unit at O2h."

O2h's 12 FTE lab units are modular, fully-customizable, well-equipped and IT-secure spaces which offer the optimum environment for highly productive, dedicated chemistry teams.

"Heptares has built some great partnerships with large biotechnology and pharma companies who recognize the strength of the Company's GPCR expertise and proprietary StaR® technology's. This is a new milestone in our on-going relationship with Heptares and we are excited to support them on their journey," said Sunil Shah, CEO, O2h.

About Heptares Therapeutics

Heptares is a drug discovery company creating new medicines targeting G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The Company is currently leveraging its GPCR expertise and proprietary StaR® technology to build a pipeline of best-in-class and first-in-class GPCR-targeted medicines for the treatment of CNS, metabolic and other diseases.

GPCRs represent the single most important family of drug targets in the human body, yet, due to their inherent instability when removed from cell membranes, little or no structural information about these valuable targets has been available to drive structure-based drug discovery programmes. Heptares' StaR® (Stabilised Receptor) technology enables the first-ever thermo-stabilisation of GPCRs. This breakthrough allows Heptares scientists to resolve GPCR structures and deploy structure-based drug discovery techniques to identify potent and selective drug candidates to previously undruggable targets.

Heptares has raised more than $40 million from leading venture investors, Clarus Ventures, MVM Life Science Partners, Novartis Option Fund and Takeda Ventures, and has formed partnerships with AstraZeneca, Shire, Takeda and Novartis. For additional information, please visit: http://www.heptares.com

About O2h, a Piramal Group Company

O2h is the discovery services arm of Piramal Pharma Solutions Ltd, a top 10 global CRAMS group, offering a unique full-service partnership at every stage of the pharma life-cycle. Piramal Pharma Solutions employs 2,500 people across 9 specialist sites in North America, UK and India. The Piramal group has a 140 year history and is publicly listed company (BSE: PIRAMALHE).

O2h's 200 employees work within its project management office in Cambridge, UK and its operations in Ahmedabad India. Current clients of O2h include several top 20 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies in the US, Europe and Japan.O2h adheres to the highest standards of performance with a particular emphasis on rapid interactive communications and delivery speed. Services provided by O2h include FTE-based medicinal, synthetic chemistry, and process chemistry as well as in vitro biology services. Further information on O2h can be found at http://www.o2h.com.

Contact information:
Dr Ekta Ahuja
info@o2h.com
OXYGEN HEALTHCARE LTD
23 Cambridge Science Park
CB4 0EY