Faust seals research pact with Takeda

Faust Pharmaceuticals S.A., a specialist in central nervous system diseases, signed a research agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd, Japan's largest pharmaceutical company, to use its Neuroclid platform to identify hits for G Protein-Coupled Receptor targets (GPCRs) of interest to Takeda. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Around 30 percent of marketed drugs target GPCRs including blockbusters such as Prozac. Faust's Neuroclid GPCR drug discovery platform detects small molecules and other agents that selectively bind the 7TM transmembrane region of GPCRs, a privileged binding site for allosteric modulators that can amplify or dampen the effect of the natural ligands.

In addition, Neuroclid can identify novel compounds and chemical families that can not be identified by traditional functional screening methods, by detecting non-active sites that can be turned into positive and negative allosteric modulators via traditional medicinal chemistry.

Strasbourg-based Faust’s lead compound, FP0011, is a small molecule glutamate inhibitor, currently in Phase II clinical development as a treatment for Parkinson's disease. A second compound FP0023, targeting Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is due to enter the clinic in 2008.