Chugai Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Roche, has teamed up with Singapore-based biotechnology company Gero to develop therapies for age-related diseases.
The collaboration will leverage Gero’s AI-driven platform for target discovery and Chugai’s proprietary antibody engineering technologies to create novel antibody drug candidates.
Under the terms of the research and licensing agreement, Gero will identify new drug targets using its AI platform, which analyses human datasets.
Chugai will then utilise its antibody engineering technologies to develop drug candidates for these targets.
Gero has granted Chugai exclusive worldwide rights for the creation, research, development, manufacturing, and commercialisation of antibodies for the identified targets.
The agreement includes an upfront payment from Chugai to Gero, with potential additional payments totalling up to $250m if certain development or sales milestones are achieved.
Should Chugai successfully launch a product, it will also pay royalties on sales to Gero.
Chugai’s president and CEO Osamu Okuda said: “We believe that open innovation with external partners, including leading global players, is extremely important for achieving global first-class drug discovery outlined in our growth strategy toward 2030, TOP I 2030.
“By combining Gero’s target discovery technology with Chugai’s drug discovery technologies, we will accelerate the creation of innovation.”
Gero CBO Alex Kadet said: “We are excited to partner with Chugai, a leading pharmaceutical company, to unlock the synergy between human data-driven target discovery and cutting-edge therapeutic design technology platforms.
“Together, we aim to develop first-in-class therapeutics to address unmet needs of increasing number of patients suffering from age-related diseases.”
Based in Tokyo, Chugai is a research-focused pharmaceutical company with a focus on drug discovery, particularly in the field of antibody engineering.
The company operates as an independent entity within the Roche Group and is listed on the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Gero is a preclinical-stage biotechnology company that uses AI to develop therapeutics for age-related diseases.
Its platform employs physics-based machine learning and human data to discover therapeutic targets and develop therapies addressing the root causes of ageing.
Gero CEO Peter Fedichev said: “Our AI platform is built to identify therapeutic targets that drive multiple age-related diseases and potentially aging itself.
“In this collaboration, we aim to translate those insights into therapeutics that can help restore the lost function.
“This partnership with Chugai is an important step toward achieving Gero’s mission: to meaningfully target the biological processes of human ageing.”
