Sosei and AbbVie ink new multi-target collaboration

Shares of Japanese drugmaker Sosei Group (TYO: 4565) were up nearly 5% at 1,500 yen today, as it announced a lucrative deal with US pharma major AbbVie (NYSE ABBV).

The companies have entered a new drug discovery collaboration and option-to-license agreement to discover, develop and commercialize small molecules that modulate novel G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) targets associated with neurological disease.

The new agreement will leverage Sosei Heptares’ StaR technology and structure-based drug design (SBDD) platform and AbbVie’s extensive neuroscience and disease area expertise. The agreement expands the breadth of the ongoing collaboration between Sosei Heptares and AbbVie, building on the first multi-target discovery agreement signed between the companies in June 2020, which is focused on the inflammatory and autoimmune disease areas.