Ansaris receives milestone payment for identification of kinase-related compound for cancer, autoimmune diseases

Ansaris announced today that it has received a milestone payment for the successful identification of a kinase-related compound under its drug discovery collaboration with Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. Ono will initiate the preclinical study of the identified compound. This collaboration between Ansaris and Ono was established to focus on the discovery of kinase-related compounds for the treatment of cancer, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. Under the terms of the Drug Discovery Agreement, Ono has worldwide rights to develop and commercialize such compounds for all indications. In return, Ansaris is eligible to receive milestone payments on the progress of preclinical and clinical development, and royalty payments based on sales of the resulting products.

“We are pleased to have expanded the pipeline of our partner, Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.”

Ansaris utilizes their proprietary drug discovery technology to design molecules and optimize drug candidates for its collaborators. Their platform combines a torsion-space algorithm for building better protein models with in silico fragment-based drug design. The approach allows Ansaris to generate drug candidates when other small molecule discovery methods fail. "This milestone validates the strength of Ansaris' platform and represents a significant achievement identifying compounds for challenging drug targets," said Joan Lau, PhD, CEO of Ansaris. "We are pleased to have expanded the pipeline of our partner, Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd."

Kazuhito Kawabata, PhD, Managing Director, Research Headquarters at Ono noted, "I continue to be impressed with the drug discovery capabilities at Ansaris and their talented team of scientists. Ansaris generated a compound for a difficult drug target and we look forward to further successes from our collaborations."

Source Ansaris