Spin-out formed
Heptares Therapeutics Ltd has been spun out by the UK’s Medical Research Council to capitalise on advances in the understanding of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), one of the most important classes of drug targets.
Although GPCRs are the targets of a number of marketed drugs, they are very difficult to crystallise, meaning that until now they have not been amenable to modern, high throughput structure-based drug discovery techniques.
Heptares has seed funding from MVM Life Sciences Partners. The company will build on the work of structural biologist Richard Henderson, Director of the research council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, who is applying single particle electron microscopy to determine the atomic structures of large proteins without the need to make a crystal.
The ambition is to use these protein structures to build a fully-fledged therapeutics company with its own discovery and development capabilities. Heptares will focus on central nervous system and metabolic disorders. There are GPCR targets in most diseases, but these two indications were selected as areas of greatest unmet medical need and where Heptares’ technology will give it a particular advantage.
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