Oxygen Healthcare (O2h) Announces Expanded Chemistry Collaboration With Heptares Therapeutics
By Oxygen Healthcare Ltd o2h, PRNEWednesday, July 13, 2011
CAMBRIDGE, England, July 14, 2011 -
Executives from O2h (Cambridge, UK) and Heptares Therapeutics
(Welwyn Garden City, UK) signed an agreement to substantially
increase the number of FTE chemists provided by O2h to support
discovery programmes at Heptares.
Dr Miles Congreve, Head of Chemistry at Heptares said, “O2h has
been a valuable partner for Heptares and we are happy to further
extend our synthetic chemistry team to include a full lab unit at
O2h.”
O2h’s 12 FTE lab units are modular, fully-customizable,
well-equipped and IT-secure spaces which offer the optimum
environment for highly productive, dedicated chemistry teams.
“Heptares has built some great partnerships with large
biotechnology and pharma companies who recognize the strength of
the Company’s GPCR expertise and proprietary StaR® technology’s.
This is a new milestone in our on-going relationship with Heptares
and we are excited to support them on their journey,” said Sunil
Shah, CEO, O2h.
About Heptares Therapeutics
Heptares is a drug discovery company creating new medicines
targeting G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The Company is
currently leveraging its GPCR expertise and proprietary StaR®
technology to build a pipeline of best-in-class and first-in-class
GPCR-targeted medicines for the treatment of CNS, metabolic and
other diseases.
GPCRs represent the single most important family of drug targets
in the human body, yet, due to their inherent instability when
removed from cell membranes, little or no structural information
about these valuable targets has been available to drive
structure-based drug discovery programmes. Heptares’ StaR®
(Stabilised Receptor) technology enables the first-ever
thermo-stabilisation of GPCRs. This breakthrough allows Heptares
scientists to resolve GPCR structures and deploy structure-based
drug discovery techniques to identify potent and selective drug
candidates to previously undruggable targets.
Heptares has raised more than $40 million from leading venture
investors, Clarus Ventures, MVM Life Science Partners, Novartis
Option Fund and Takeda Ventures, and has formed partnerships with
AstraZeneca, Shire, Takeda and Novartis. For additional
information, please visit: www.heptares.com
About O2h, a Piramal Group Company
O2h is the discovery services arm of Piramal Pharma Solutions
Ltd, a top 10 global CRAMS group, offering a unique full-service
partnership at every stage of the pharma life-cycle. Piramal Pharma
Solutions employs 2,500 people across 9 specialist sites in North
America, UK and India. The Piramal group has a 140 year history and
is publicly listed company (BSE: PIRAMALHE).
O2h’s 200 employees work within its project management office in
Cambridge, UK and its operations in Ahmedabad India. Current
clients of O2h include several top 20 pharmaceutical and
biotechnology companies in the US, Europe and Japan.O2h adheres to
the highest standards of performance with a particular emphasis on
rapid interactive communications and delivery speed. Services
provided by O2h include FTE-based medicinal, synthetic chemistry,
and process chemistry as well as in vitro biology services. Further
information on O2h can be found at
Contact information:
Dr Ekta Ahuja
info@o2h.com
OXYGEN HEALTHCARE LTD
23 Cambridge Science Park
CB4 0EY
+44(0)1223437014
Tags: Cambridge, England, July 14, Oxygen Healthcare Ltd (o2h), United Kingdom
