Shouti Inc. has established subsidiary Basecamp Bio to navigate the complex challenges of membrane protein structure-based drug discovery. Using Shanghai and San Francisco-based Shouti’s drug discovery engine, Basecamp is intended to prosecute challenging drug discovery targets, including G-protein coupled receptors, and add new assets to Shouti’s development pipeline.
The G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) is a foundational building block of modern medicine. While nearly everyone has taken one sometime in the past few decades, development has greatly slowed. With a fundraiser in hand, Septerna Inc. is looking at new ways of working around and through old problems.
Attempts to modernize the conceptual framework of brain function and dysfunction are one prerequisite for brain disorders to benefit from precision medicine. For the circuit-based insights that are slowly emerging to benefit patients, though, better targeting methods are needed.
Shouti Inc. raised $100 million in a series B round led by BVF Partners LP to advance its discovery platform for designing oral medicines and to speed up the development of its candidates. The Shanghai and California-based company has secured a total of $158 million in funding so far.
An exome sequencing study of more than 600,000 individuals of European and mixed American ancestry has identified more than a dozen genes, including five brain-expressed G protein-coupled receptors, that were associated with body mass index.
LONDON – The Google artificial intelligence company Deepmind has developed an algorithm that can predict the 3D structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence, making it possible to solve the structures of proteins, such as G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), which are a mainstay of drug targeting but whose structure is challenging to determine with current methods.
Longboard Pharmaceuticals Inc. is spinning out from Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc., courtesy of a $56 million financing to help develop CNS-targeted therapies. On the table to be developed are compounds discovered using Arena’s G protein-coupled receptor research engine.
LONDON – Sosei Heptares has attracted a third pharma partner to its G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) discovery platform, signing a potential $1 billion-plus deal with Abbvie Inc. in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.