Centessa Pharmaceuticals, Orexia Therapeutics, and Schrödinger Announce Collaboration to Discover Novel Orexin Receptor Agonists
October 18, 2021 at 08:00 am EDT
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Schrödinger and Centessa Pharmaceuticals plc together with subsidiary Orexia Therapeutics announced an exclusive collaboration focused on the discovery of novel therapeutics targeting the orexin-2 receptor (OX2R), which is known to play a role in a broad spectrum of sleep disorders including narcolepsy. The collaboration provides Orexia with substantial access to Schrödinger’s entire computational platform as well as Schrödinger’s extensive expertise in ultra-large-scale deployment of its technology. Orexia will leverage Schrödinger’s computational platform, including LiveDesign and Free Energy Perturbation (FEP+), which facilitates high-performance calculations for drug discovery to enable accurate prediction of potency at the target of interest. The collaboration will be enabled by Orexia’s structural biology capabilities, including the stabilized OX2R StaR® protein exclusively licensed from Sosei Heptares, and high-resolution crystal structures in agonist conformation. The collaboration represents the first time Schrödinger’s technology will be applied in an orexin agonist setting at scale. Under the terms of the agreement, Orexia will be responsible for preclinical research activities, clinical development and commercialization of future product candidates discovered under the collaboration. Schrödinger will receive an upfront software access payment and may become eligible to receive certain preclinical, development, regulatory and commercial milestone payments, as well as low single digit royalties on global net sales.
Schrodinger, Inc. operates a physics-based computational platform that enables the discovery of molecules for drug development and materials applications. The software platform is used by biopharmaceutical and industrial companies, academic institutions, and government laboratories around the world. The Company operates through two segments: Software and Drug Discovery. The Software segment is focused on selling its software to transform drug discovery across the life sciences industry, as well as to customers in materials science industries. The Drug Discovery segment is focused on building a diverse portfolio of preclinical and clinical programs, internally and through collaborations, that have advanced to various stages of discovery and development. The Company's pipeline of drug discovery programs includes SGR-1505 (MALT1 Inhibitor), SGR-2921 (CDC7 Inhibitor), SGR-3515 (WEE1 Inhibitor). Its software was used by researchers around the world at more than 1,760 academic institutions.