Heptares Signs Agreement With Novartis Option Fund

Heptares Therapeutics (Heptares) has entered into an option agreement with the Novartis Option Fund. As per the deal, Heptares will apply its proprietary StaR technology to generate novel drug leads against a nominated, unspecified GPCR target of interest to Novartis.

The agreement includes upfront and potential milestone payments to Heptares totaling up to $200m plus royalties. Full financial terms were not disclosed.

Under the terms of the agreement, Heptares will apply its StaR technology to a target identified by Novartis and drive a drug discovery program against that target.

Malcolm Weir, CEO of Heptares, said: “The deal with the Novartis Option Fund demonstrates confidence that our approach can unlock the potential of GCPR targets and forms a solid foundation for other partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.”

Anja Koenig, managing director of Novartis Option Fund, said: “The potential of GPCRs as targets for drug discovery is well recognised, but it has always been a challenge to gain structural information on GPCRs. We believe that the power of Heptares’ technology to resolve GPCR structures in small molecule chemistry will lead to rapid progress in the drug discovery programme against Novartis’ nominated target.”