" class="no-js "lang="en-US"> Sosei Heptares Receives Grant Funding from Wellcome to Advance the Development of Potent, Differentiated Oral Anti-Viral Small Molecules to Treat COVID-19 - Medtech Alert
Friday, March 29, 2024

Sosei Heptares Receives Grant Funding from Wellcome to Advance the Development of Potent, Differentiated Oral Anti-Viral Small Molecules to Treat COVID-19

Sosei Group Corporation (“the Company”; TSE: 4565) today announced it has received grant funding from Wellcome, through the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator. The funding will be used to advance the pre-clinical development of the Company’s novel oral anti-viral small molecules targeting the main protease of SARS-CoV-2 (Mpro), an enzyme critical to SARS-CoV-2 replication, as potential treatments for COVID-19.

Sosei Heptares initiated its COVID-19 R&D program in April 2020 with the aim of applying its world-leading structure-based drug design capabilities to design drug candidates that selectively inhibit Mpro. The Company has also been leveraging the highly conserved structure of SARS-CoV-2 Mpro as a basis for the design of small molecules that could be effective against predicted future variants of SARS-CoV-2 and other related human viruses.

The Company’s most advanced candidate resulting from this program, SH-879, has demonstrated potent anti-viral activity against SARS-CoV-2 as well as potential for oral dosing and a differentiated profile from other anti-viral drugs for COVID-19 that are either approved or in late-stage development.

Sosei Heptares will deploy the funding from Wellcome to accelerate development of SH-879 and other potential candidates through preclinical studies, targeting the nomination of a single clinical candidate for human trials with a convenient dosing regime and the potential for use without the need for co-dosing with other anti-viral therapies.

This work is being supported by a Wellcome grant through the COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator. The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator was launched in March 2020 by Wellcome, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Mastercard, with additional funding from a range of donors to accelerate the development of COVID-19 therapeutics that address gaps in existing treatment research.

Miles Congreve, Chief Scientific Officer of Sosei Heptares, commented: “The past 18 months has seen incredible progress in the development of vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19. We are very proud to be participating in this global effort and excited by our progress and the future potential of our own program to create an effective anti-viral agent that can be dosed as a single agent. The program will benefit from the significant additional funding received from Wellcome and we are delighted to have this prestigious organization as a partner in this endeavor.”

Sosei Heptares acknowledges its collaborators on this program, including Syngene International, Domainex, Fidelta, o2h Discovery, Piramal, WuXi AppTec and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi).

People In This Post

Companies In This Post

  1. Eloxx Pharmaceuticals Announces Final Data Assessment from Phase 2 Combination Clinical Trial of ELX-02 in Class 1 Cystic Fibrosis Patients Read more
  2. Verge Genomics Announces Positive Safety and Tolerability Data from the Phase 1 Clinical Trial of VRG50635, a Potential Best-in-Class Therapeutic for All Forms of ALS Read more
  3. DEM BioPharma Appoints Wendy Young, Ph.D., to Scientific Advisory Board Read more
  4. Confo Therapeutics Enters into Research Collaboration for GPCR-Targeting Antibody Discovery with AbCellera Read more
  5. Vyriad Announces Expansion of T-Cell Lymphoma Trial at Mayo Clinic Read more