Sosei Enters Collaboration to Combine Pioneering DNA Technologies With StaR® Technology to Accelerate New Drug Discovery

TOKYO and LONDON, November 7, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

Sosei Group Corporation ("Sosei" or "the Company") (TSE: 4565), announces that its wholly owned subsidiary Heptares Therapeutics has entered a new collaboration agreement designed to extend its leadership in GPCR medicine design and accelerate new drug discovery.

The collaboration agreement with Germany-based DyNAbind GmbH aims to pioneer the application of next-generation DNA-based technologies against Stabilized Receptor (StaR®) proteins to rapidly generate and optimize selective and potent small molecule drug candidates for multiple GPCR drug targets, including historically hard-to-drug targets.

Dr Malcolm Weir, Executive Vice President and Chief R&D Officer, said: "This exciting collaboration offers an opportunity to enhance further our world-leading StaR® technology and structure-based drug discovery platform. By working with DyNAbind to deploy the very latest advances in DNA-encoded library technologies with StaR® proteins we are adding a new approach to generate drug candidates to progress into our pipeline. This represents yet another example of how the Company is seeking out cutting-edge technologies to strengthen our platform and discovery capabilities and thereby maximize the long-term value we can derive from StaR® proteins."

Financial terms of the collaboration are not disclosed. There are no material financial costs to the Company under the collaboration agreement, and Sosei retains all rights to advance the best compounds into discovery and development.

About DyNAbind 

DyNAbind GmbH is a start-up company based in Dresden, Germany, offering a next-generation platform of DNA-Encoded Library (DEL) technologies for drug discovery and optimization. DyNAbind's founders have years of experience in developing and working with DEL technologies, which has driven the development of their novel Dynamic Library platform.

By specifically tuning a DNA architecture for transient interactions, fragment molecules in the library dynamically self-assemble and rearrange themselves into ideal binding structures, offering dramatically improved signal-to-noise ratios and reduced false positive hit rates. Follow-up quantitative hit validation can begin without the need for hit resynthesis, allowing meaningful results to arrive in days instead of months.

About Sosei 

Sosei is an international biopharmaceutical company focused on the design and development of new medicines originating from its proprietary GPCR-targeted StaR® technology and structure-based drug design platform capabilities. The Company is advancing a broad and deep pipeline of partnered and wholly owned product candidates in multiple therapeutic areas, including CNS, cancer, metabolic diseases and other rare/specialty indications. The Company's leading clinical programs include a proprietary Phase 2 candidate for dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) in Japan, together with partnered candidates aimed at the symptomatic treatment of Alzheimer's disease (with Allergan) and immuno-oncology approaches to treat cancer (with AstraZeneca). Sosei's additional partners and collaborators include Novartis, Pfizer, Daiichi-Sankyo, PeptiDream, Kymab and MorphoSys. The Company is headquartered in Japan with R&D facilities in the UK and Switzerland.

Sosei is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (code: 4565). For more information, please visit http://www.sosei.com/en/.

Forward-looking statements  

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements about the discovery, development and commercialization of products. Various risks may cause Sosei's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including: adverse results in clinical development programs; failure to obtain patent protection for inventions; commercial limitations imposed by patents owned or controlled by third parties; dependence upon strategic alliance partners to develop and commercialize products and services; difficulties or delays in obtaining regulatory approvals to market products and services resulting from development efforts; the requirement for substantial funding to conduct research and development and to expand commercialization activities; and product initiatives by competitors. As a result of these factors, prospective investors are cautioned not to rely on any forward-looking statements. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Enquiries:
Sosei
Investor Relations and Corporate Communications
+81(0)3-5210-3399
Shinichiro Nishishita, Yu Okada
ir@sosei.com
   
Citigate Dewe Rogerson (for international media)
Mark Swallow, David Dible
sosei@citigatedewerogerson.com
+44(0)20-7638-9571