AstraZeneca gains rights to Heptares GPCR drug for $6.25 million upfront

Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) revealed this morning that it has entered a four-year collaboration with fellow UK-based drug developer Heptares Therapeutics focused on the potential discovery and development of new medicines targeting G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs).

Under the terms of the accord, AstraZeneca has worldwide commercial rights to product candidates emerging from the collaboration. Heptares will receive an upfront $6.25 million cash payment fee plus committed research funding and also qualifies for significant future payments depending on delivery of agreed milestones. Heptares will also receive royalties on sales of all products discovered through the joint research. Further financial terms were not revealed.

GPCRs are among the largest and most important family of proteins found in the human body, yet they become highly unstable when removed from their natural membrane-bound environments. This instability has prevented pharmaceutical researchers from understanding GPCR structures and hampered efforts to design medicines that work on GPCR targets.