Benzinga | Dec 16, 2021 07:32AM EST

Sosei Heptares Enters Antibody Discovery Agreement With Twist Bioscience To Discover And Develop Novel Therapeutic Antibodies Against GPCR Targets

Twist Bioscience Corporation (NASDAQ:TWST), a company enabling customers to succeed through its offering of high-quality synthetic DNA using its silicon platform, and Sosei Group Corporation ("the Company"; TSE: 4565), the world leader in GPCR-focused structure-based drug design (SBDD) and development, announced a strategic collaboration to discover therapeutic antibodies against G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) identified by Sosei Heptares.

The collaboration will utilize Sosei Heptares' fully structurally enabled GPCR target proteins, isolated and stabilized using its proprietary StaR(r) (stabilized receptor) platform technology.

Twist will leverage its proprietary antibody libraries, including two synthetic GPCR-focused antibody libraries, and apply its sophisticated bioinformatics approaches.

Sosei Heptares will have exclusive, full global rights to develop and commercialize any antibody leads identified and directed to the targets of interest. Twist will be eligible for an upfront payment, ongoing R&D costs and future payments based on the achievement of predefined development milestones. No financial terms are disclosed.

Miles Congreve, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer, Sosei Heptares, said: "We are excited to partner with Twist Biopharma, a division of Twist Bioscience, to combine our world-leading GPCR-focused protein stabilization technologies with Twist's extensive libraries, as well as innovative discovery and optimization technologies for therapeutic antibodies. GPCRs are implicated in a wide variety of diseases where antibody therapeutics are currently used. As a target class representing up to 30% of current drug targets, very few GPCR-targeting antibodies are approved drugs. This collaboration cements our ambition to enhance our ability to expand and exploit the potential opportunities generated by our GPCR platform, to create promising GPCR-targeting antibody therapeutics for a range of diseases."

"We are pleased to partner with Sosei Heptares, a recognized leader in the stabilization of GPCR targets," said Emily M. Leproust, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Twist Bioscience. "We believe that by leveraging our target class specific GPCR antibody library along with our discovery and optimization capabilities, we will identify key antibody leads for further development by Sosei Heptares."