Centessa Pharmaceuticals Subsidiary, Orexia Therapeutics, and Schrödinger Announce Collaboration to Discover Novel Orexin Receptor Agonists

Schrödinger (computation drug discovery company) and Centessa Pharmaceuticals, (a novel asset-centric pharmaceutical company) together with subsidiary Orexia Therapeutics entered 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. 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.