Date: 2016-10-05
Type of information: R&D agreement
Compound: antimalarial drug
Company: Daiichi Sankyo (Japan) Medicines for Malaria Venture
Therapeutic area: Parasitic diseases
Type agreement: R&D
Action mechanism:
Disease: malaria
Details: * On October 5, 2016, Daiichi Sankyo announced that it has entered into a new joint research agreement with Medicines for Malaria Venture (hereafter MMV) regarding Lead Optimization Project with the aim of developing a new, innovative antimalarial drug. In June 2013, Daiichi Sankyo and MMV launched a High-Throughput Screening (HTS) project of a 50,000 compounds library from Daiichi Sankyo with the goal of discovering antimalarial hit compounds. Building on the identification of three hit series during the HTS project, Hit-to-Lead project was launched in March 2015. As a result of these previous collaborative research projects, two leads that meet the criteria set by the Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (hereafter GHIT Fund) and MMV have been obtained. The collaborative research will now proceed to the next stage as Lead Optimization Project beginning in October 2016. The project goal for the Daiichi Sankyo and MMV project team is to produce a clinical candidate with suitable antimalarial “drug-like” properties.
Financial terms: This collaborative research project is funded through the GHIT Fund’s Product Development Platform and will receive approximately 180 million yen over a period of two years. The GHIT Fund is a public-private partnership between the Japanese government, multiple pharmaceutical companies, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, and UNDP. Launched in April 2013 with an initial commitment of more than US$100 million and now with capital of over US$140 million, the organization taps Japanese research and development (R&D) to fight neglected diseases.
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