August 6, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
UK-based AstraZeneca PLC announced today that it inked a licensing agreement with Heptares Therapeutics, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sosei Group Corporation, for global rights to HTL-1071 for the treatment of a number of cancers.
HTL-1071 is an adenosine A2A receptor antagonist. Adenosine is produced by tumor cells and stimulates A2A receptors, which prevents immune cells, T-cells, from proliferating. HTL-1071 has the potential to block this activity, allowing the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells.
AstraZeneca will pay Heptares $10 million upfront and additional near-term payments based on preclinical and clinical milestones. If HTL-1071 makes it to the market, Heptares could receive more than $500 million as well as double-digit tiered royalties.
“We are pleased to expand our successful collaboration with Heptares into the exciting area of immuno-oncology,” said Susan Galbraith, vice president, head of Oncology for AstraZeneca’s Innovative Medicines and Early Development Unit in a statement. “By combining the pioneering A2A receptor program with the strength of AstraZeneca’s oncology portfolio, we hope to develop novel treatments with the potential to transform the lives of patients.”
On July 31, Heptares announced it was exercising an option with Germany-based MorphoSys AG to leverage MorphoSys’s Ylanthia antibody library. It was initiated in February 2013 with a collaboration agreement. The option is an attempt to create antibody leads to a GPCR target of Heptares’s choosing. Heptares has engineered a StaR antigen to the target.
MorphoSys will receive a licensing fee and research and development funding. It may also receive milestone payments and royalties on any drugs or therapies that are commercialized.
GPCRs are membrane proteins involved in inflammatory diseases, neuroscience indications, cancer and metabolic diseases. GPCRs have proven to be challenging to work with and had limited success in therapeutic development. Heptares StaR technology allows researchers to purify properly folded and functional proteins outside the cell membrane, which maintains the molecules’ pharmacological properties.
MorphoSys’s Ylanthia antibody library has more than 100 billion fully human antibodies, the largest Fab library in the industry.
The deal between Heptares and AstraZeneca also focuses on the G-protein-coupled-receptors (GPCR). “The A2A receptor program at Heptares has been an outstanding example of our Structure Based Drug Design approach in action, resulting in a novel clinical candidate, HTL-1071 with a highly attractive profile,” said Malcolm Weird, chief executive officer of Heptares in a statement. “ Heptares is targeting GPCR that play a key role in cancer biology through the identification of both antibody and small molecule therapeutics. We are delighted to be entering this expanding field by partnering with AstraZeneca, an innovative leader in the field of cancer immunotherapy.”
In February 2015, Tokyo-based Sosei Group Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company with operations in Japan and the UK, acquired Heptares Therapeutics. That deal was for $180 million (US) in cash and up to $220 million based on progression of Heptares’ pipeline and platform.
Heptares has an M1 agonist in Phase Ib development for cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s and schizophrenia, and six other compounds in preclinical development.
