Neurimmune and Ono Pharmaceutical collaborate in the field of neurodegenerative diseases

The Alzheimer's drug Aducanumab, which Neurimmune developed in collaboration with Biogen, is not making much progress despite accelerated approval by the FDA. The European regulatory authority has denied approval and the US health insurance company Medicare has restricted coverage. In other partnerships, however, Neurimmune is doing well. Only ten days ago, a partnership with AstraZeneca was announced. Now the cooperation with Ono Pharmaceuticals is being expanded.

In the new collaboration, the companies aim to generate and validate human-derived monoclonal antibodies against Ono’s newly selected drug targets. Ono will obtain exclusive rights for worldwide development and commercialization of antibody products resulting from the collaboration. Ono will pay to Neurimmune an upfront payment, research fees, success-based milestones on the research and development progress, as well as royalties on product sales.

In November 2017, Ono and Neurimmune signed a first drug discovery collaboration agreement to identify and develop human antibodies using the RTM technology platform. “We extremely appreciate Neurimmune’s RTM technology platform as an excellent antibody creation technology through our drug discovery projects.” said Toichi Takino, Senior Executive Officer / Executive Director, Discovery & Research of Ono Pharmaceutical. “Through this new collaboration, we will expand our central nervous system disease portfolio and work to deliver innovative medicines to patients with neurodegenerative diseases.”

(Press release / SK)