Under the agreement, Heptares is expected to work on its proprietary StaR (stabilized receptor) technology to engineer its thermally stabilized forms of the GPCR as the basis for the drug discovery programme.
Heptares will also apply advanced structural biology and rational drug design approaches – including Biophysical Mapping, X-ray crystallography and fragment screening – to characterize the GPCR’s structure and to generate early leads.
However, Takeda will participate in lead generation and will be responsible for preclinical development and clinical development of new drugs candidates.
The tie up allows Takeda to obtain worldwide commercial rights to new drugs which will be developed under this collaboration.
Under the contract, Takeda has already paid an upfront payment of GBP1.7m to Heptares and an investment in an equity stake of approximately GBP2.8m purchased by Takeda Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Takeda.
Further, Heptares is also entitled to receive future milestone payments of up to GBP60.5m plus royalties on product sales.
Takeda Pharmaceutical chief scientific officer Shigenori Ohkawa said the Heptares StaR technology is a powerful new capability for discovering GPCR-targeted drugs and they look forward to applying it to a specific GPCR target of interest to Takeda in the area of neuroscience.