Pharmaceutical firms Novartis and Takeda both exited UK-based Alzheimer’s disease drug developer Heptares Therapeutics after it was acquired yesterday by Sosei Group in a deal worth up to $400m.
Sosei is paying $180m in cash up front, with an additional $220m contingent on Heptares successfully advancing its drug platform and pipeline.
Founded in 2007, Heptares’ Star platform is being used to develop a drug pipeline to treat disorders along the neuroscience, metabolic and orphan disease areas. Three of the candidates on the platform will focus on treating Alzheimer’s.
The company’s investors included Takeda, which participated in a $21m round for Heptares in 2013 alongside Stanley Family Foundation and venture firm Clarus Ventures, through its Takeda Ventures unit, as well as Novartis Venture Fund and MVM Life Science Partners.
Takeda also agreed a two-year drug discovery collaboration with Heptares in 2011, at the same time as an equity investment of about £2.8m ($4.5m at contemporary rates). Novartis, Clarus and MVM invested £21m in the company in 2009.
Graeme Martin, CEO of Takeda Ventures, told Global Corporate Venturing in 2012 as part of a feature on Heptares: “This company started from the get-go with a very solid investor base who were in there for the long haul and understood what is required to get it to go forward.
“When we invested the technology had been validated, but it had some way to go to become industrialised.”