Sosei Group Corporation ("the Company"; TSE: 4565) has been notified by its strategic alliance partner Pfizer that it has nominated a third clinical candidate from the multi-target drug discovery collaboration between the two companies. Achievement of this milestone triggers a payment of $3 million to Sosei Heptares. This new candidate is an oral small molecule targeting a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) implicated in metabolic and other diseases.

Pfizer has nominated three distinct clinical candidates from the collaboration with Sosei Heptares during 2019, one of which recently entered a first clinical trial. The candidates have resulted from the combined and complementary expertise of drug discovery teams within Pfizer and Sosei Heptares. The collaboration has also leveraged Sosei Heptares' unique StaR® technology and Structure-based Drug Design (SBDD) capabilities to design molecules that modulate different GPCR targets across multiple disease areas. Sosei Heptares has now received $14 million in significant milestone payments from Pfizer during 2019.

Dr. Malcolm Weir, Executive Vice President, Research & Early Development at Sosei Heptares, said: "Sosei Heptares has a clear goal to be the partner of choice for pharma companies looking for novel drug candidates designed to address highly validated yet challenging targets. The exciting progress being made with Pfizer is a clear demonstration of the productivity that can be achieved through the combination of complementary teams with the unique insights into GPCR targets we can derive from applying our StaR® technology and SBDD approach. We look forward to providing updates from this and other development programs in due course."

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