BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE, United Kingdom--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Cerevance, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company advancing new medicines for brain diseases, has formed a multi-year research alliance with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (“Takeda”) to identify novel target proteins expressed in the central nervous system and to develop new therapies against them for certain GI disorders. Scientists from the companies will select, confirm and validate targets from rich gene expression data sets generated by Cerevance’s NETSseq technology, which sorts and profiles specific neuronal and glial cell types in post-mortem human central nervous system tissue at unparalleled depth.
Under the terms of the agreement, which includes an upfront technology access fee and research support to Cerevance, Takeda will pay preclinical and clinical milestone payments and royalties to Cerevance as targets are validated and compounds are advanced through development and onto the market worldwide. Cerevance is eligible to receive development, commercialization and net sales-based milestone payments that may exceed $170 million on a per target basis.
“Through our new collaboration with Cerevance, we will access a highly innovative technology to identify new and unique targets for the treatment of GI disorders,” said Gareth Hicks, PhD, Head of the Gastrointestinal Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda. “We are excited to work with Cerevance scientists to drive forward our mission to provide new therapies for the highest unmet medical needs of patients with GI diseases.”
“We are thrilled to be collaborating with Takeda on this comprehensive effort to create novel therapies for patients suffering from GI disorders that can be targeted via modulation of CNS pathways," said Mark Carlton, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Cerevance. “The GI expertise of Takeda’s research organization is world renowned. We are looking forward to applying our powerful NETSseq CNS drug target identification platform to GI diseases with the Takeda team.”
About Cerevance
Cerevance is a private pharmaceutical company focused on central nervous system diseases. The company’s strengths include its powerful NETSseq target discovery platform, a large collection of human brain tissue samples, a pipeline of novel discovery-stage and clinical-stage compounds and a team with a proven track record. Its scientists believe that they are well positioned to deliver life-changing therapeutics for patients who have brain-related disorders. For more information, visit cerevance.com.