Sosei Heptares and Kallyope collaboration milestone with first GPCR target

Japanese biopharma giant, Sosei and clinical-stage biotech company Kallyope that discovers and develops oral, small-molecule therapeutics for diseases with high unmet needs announced yesterday (November 9) the successful identification, validation, and nomination of a first G protein coupled receptor (GPCR) target to enter a therapeutic discovery program for gastrointestinal diseases.

The collaboration aims to make use of Sosei Heptares’ GPCR diversified compound library and GPCR expertise and Kallyope's Klarity platform, which combines single-cell sequencing, circuit mapping, computational biology, and enteroid phenotypic screening.

Matt Barnes, president of Heptares Therapeutics and head of UK R&D, said: “This first important milestone with Kallyope has been rapidly achieved through the combination of our respective world-leading technologies, expertise and focus on discovering novel therapeutics targeting unmet needs in gastrointestinal diseases.

“It is exciting to see tangible outputs from our target identification and validation strategy across our portfolio of collaborations with innovative companies, like Kallyope. Advancing novel programs like these, into the drug discovery phase, is important to enrich our early pipeline and provides opportunities for developing future medicines to address unmet medical need.”

The collaborating teams at Sosei Heptares and Kallyope say they intend to progress the nominated target into a fully supported structure-based drug discovery program as well as continue to identify additional gastrointestinal targets for future programs.

Jay Galeota, president and CEO, Kallyope, said: “This achievement further confirms the effectiveness of Kallyope’s unique target discovery platform and scientific expertise, and the value of collaboration with the GPCR platform and expertise of Sosei Heptares.

“Our Klarity platform’s broad set of integrated technologies and insights allows us to understand communication between the gut, brain, and other organs in a fundamentally new way that, together with the leading compound library and structural biology capabilities that Sosei Heptares has built, can lead to the development of therapeutic interventions that represent important steps forward in treating gastrointestinal diseases, reducing suffering and improving human health.”

Kallyope explain the gut being the largest sensory organ, with a surface area 100 times that of skin, homes more nerve cells than the spinal cord. The company highlights that for centuries, science has recognized the relationship between the gut and the brain, but only recently has the scientific community begun to understand the central role the connection plays in governing physiology and behavior. 

Its platform, Klarity, is a purpose built therapeutic platform it says brings together the broadest set of integrated end-to-end technologies for discovery and translation of gut-brain in the biopharma landscape today. 

The company says: "Our platform’s strength is its combination of multiple discovery and translation-enabling technologies and our expertise in applying them."

It works with single cell sequencing, circuit mapping, optogenetics and chemogenetics, mouse and human organoids, gut targeted molecules and human genetics.