Sosei Heptares and InveniAI Enter a Multi-target AI-powered and GPCR-focused Drug Discovery Collaboration

Tokyo, Japan, and Cambridge, UK, 6 July 2021 – Sosei Group Corporation (“the Company”; TSE: 4565), the world leader in GPCR-focused structure-based drug design and development, and InveniAI® LLC (“InveniAI,” Guilford, CT, USA), a global leader in pioneering the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to transform innovation across drug discovery and development, announced today the initiation of a new R&D collaboration.

The objective of the collaboration is to identify new therapeutic product concepts for immune diseases where an AI and ML based approach can be applied to generate compelling evidence for the role of G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) in relevant immunomodulatory pathways; the goal being to use these targets as a basis for SBDD to generate novel compounds that could improve responses to existing immunotherapies.

The collaboration will combine InveniAI's AI-powered platform for target discovery with Sosei Heptares' world-leading GPCR structure-based drug design and early development capabilities generate and advance transformative therapeutics across disease indications that remain with high unmet medical needs.

Dr. Miles Congreve, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer, Sosei Heptares, said: "We are excited to work together with InveniAI and look forward to integrating our unique capabilities to seek and identify new links between undrugged GPCR targets and compelling disease indications. This collaboration has the potential to further extend our GPCR-focused drug discovery and early development capabilities. GPCRs represent an important class of pharmaceutical targets, and it is estimated that about 30% of known drugs have their mode of action through a relatively small number of GPCRs. This leaves a significant number of remaining GPCR targets that could be attractive for therapeutic intervention. InveniAI's AlphaMeld® platform will deconvolute the biology of disease and industrialize target discovery by rapidly unravelling connections between GPCR targets and diseases with high unmet need."

InveniAI’s Chief Business Officer, Aman Kant, added, “We are delighted to collaborate with Sosei Heptares, an industry leader in GPCR-based therapeutic modality. We have consistently demonstrated our AI capabilities in generating clinic-ready programs across various therapeutic modalities, including biologics, small molecules, and nucleotide-based therapies. This collaboration will leverage InveniAI’s AI-based high-throughput discovery pipeline with Sosei Heptares’ complementary chemistry approach to deliver drug candidates efficiently, at a scale, and with an enhanced probability of clinical success. We continue to be excited about AlphaMeld’s potential, as numerous candidates have now progressed to various stages in clinical development as far as NDA submission.”