Published: February 07, 2011
Ansaris Receives Milestone Payment from Ono under Drug Discovery Collaboration
BLUE BELL, Pa. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - 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.
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."
About Ansaris
Ansaris, a division of Locus Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is a privately-held
biopharmaceutical company focused on solving today's small molecule drug
discovery challenges. Ansaris' proprietary technology platform combines
a torsion-space algorithm for building better protein modeling with in
silico fragment-based drug design to yield break-through
therapeutics. The approach has enabled the advancement of numerous
"stalled" programs by identifying new protein forms and novel binding
sites including competitive and allosteric sites on enzymes and hotspots
for protein-protein interactions. Ansaris has successfully generated
drug candidates in oncology, inflammation, infectious and cardiovascular
diseases and currently has ongoing collaborations with Ono and Novartis.
For further information on Ansaris, please visit the company's website
at www.ansarisbio.com.
Ansaris
Elaine DePaul
Manager, Corporate Administration
215-358-2028
edepaul@ansarisbio.com
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