Sosei Heptares confirms new leadership focused on driving growth from its Granta Park R&D centre
Sosei Heptares has unveiled a raft of senior leadership changes as it focuses on driving growth out of its R&D expertise at Granta Park.
Chris Cargill, who was CFO, has been confirmed as the pharmaceutical company’s new president and CEO, succeeding Shinichi Tamura, who becomes chairman.
Meanwhile, Dr Matt Barnes, who joined in 2016, becomes president of Heptares Therapeutics Ltd and head of UK R&D, based at the company’s R&D centre of excellence on Granta Park.
Hironoshin Nomura becomes CFO and Kieran Johnson becomes chief accounting officer in other changes at the company, which said the new team would focus on expanding its GPCR-focused structure-based drug design platform and enhancing its translational medicine capabilities. GPCRs - G-protein-coupled receptors - are the largest and most diverse group of membrane receptors and are targets for around half the drugs on the market, according to some estimates.
Under the new team, Sosie Heptares promised a “venture-like” capital allocation approach to propel its pipeline through phase 1b/2a clinical proof of concept.
Mr Cargill, who joined Sosei Heptares in 2017 and previously worked in corporate finance at KPMG and as an investment banker with JP Morgan, said: “I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead the company into its next phase of growth. Our new leadership team, and the company as a whole, is excited and motivated by the significant opportunity ahead of us.
“The next stage of our growth is focused on leveraging our global leadership position in GPCR-focused drug discovery to rapidly build and advance exciting new programs through our internal pipeline to the ‘sweet spot’ for R&D investment, which we view as the phase 1b/2a clinical proof-of-concept stage in patients.
“This stage represents a key data inflection point that we would expect to trigger high value partnering deals and fund continued expansion.
“To do this, we aim to build on the strength of the existing team and SBDD platform at our world-class R&D facility in Cambridge, and establish a rigorous and truly best-in-class discovery and translational medicine capability that applies cutting-edge technologies and expertise alongside a ‘venture-like’ capital allocation approach to optimise decision-making and value generation from our programs.
“We have started making progress towards this goal through the addition of expertise internally and through the collaborations we have entered with innovative technology companies, such as InveniAI, Verily and others. This has already yielded novel targets and new ways of exploring and exploiting our powerful platform.
“In the near term, we expect to secure complementary world-class translational medicine capabilities to ‘turbo charge’ our discovery and early development strategy, accelerating the progress of much needed medicines for patients, and building a global drug discovery and translational medicine powerhouse.”
“In addition to driving this growth from our existing R&D business in the UK, we will continue to diligently seek out global expansion opportunities in the areas of drug discovery technology investments, licensing of late-stage products for Japanese patients, and strategic acquisitions.”
Shinichi Tamura said: “I would like to congratulate Chris, Matt, Hironoshin and Kieran on their well-deserved promotions. These are truly exciting times for Sosei Heptares and I am confident that the new executive team, working with our world-class discovery and development team, will successfully drive the Company through the next stage of its evolution.
“On behalf of the board, I would like to express my deep gratitude and appreciation to Malcolm Weir and Tim Tasker who have retired from day-to-day operations but will remain close to the company as consultants. Both have made a tremendous contribution over the years to Sosei Heptares, and their counsel and extensive knowledge and experience will be valuable to support the future development of the Company.”
Dr Barnes previously held roles as head of molecular pharmacology and senior vice president, drug discovery and head of R&D portfolio management at the company.
He has more than 20 years’ experience in the biotech and pharmaceutical industry and previously held positions at Takeda in Cambridge and at Celltech Ltd (now UCB).
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