Sosei Group Corporation has been notified by its strategic alliance partner Pfizer that it has nominated a third clinical candidate from the multi-target drug discovery collaboration between the two companies. Achievement of this milestone triggers a payment of $3 million to Sosei Heptares. This new candidate is an oral small molecule targeting a G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) implicated in metabolic and other diseases. Pfizer has nominated three distinct clinical candidates from the collaboration with Sosei Heptares during 2019, one of which recently entered a first clinical trial. The candidates have resulted from the combined and complementary expertise of drug discovery teams within Pfizer and Sosei Heptares. The collaboration has also leveraged Sosei Heptares' unique StaR® technology and Structure-based Drug Design (SBDD) capabilities to design molecules that modulate different GPCR targets across multiple disease areas. Sosei Heptares has now received $14 million in significant milestone payments from Pfizer during 2019. Sosei Heptares and Pfizer entered a multi-target drug discovery collaboration in November 2015 to research and develop potential new medicines directed at up to ten GPCR targets across multiple therapeutic areas. Many of these targets have clinical or biological validation as key points for therapeutic intervention potentially targeting a range of diseases but have proven difficult to address with conventional discovery approaches because of inherent technical challenges. To address these challenges, Sosei Heptares and Pfizer scientists are working closely together to leverage their respective complementary expertise in enabling GPCR-focused structure-based drug design (SBDD) and development initially directed to the GPCR targets selected by Pfizer. Pfizer will be responsible for developing and commercialising any potential therapeutic agents (small molecules or biologics) for each target and will have exclusive global rights to any potential resulting agents.