Takeda Pharmaceutical has been on a tear over the past few weeks, striking deals to develop new therapies for various diseases. On Monday, the Japan-based pharma powerhouse announced a multi-year drug discovery deal with Charles River Laboratories.
Charles River will use its strengths to help develop potential drug candidates across Takeda’s four core therapeutic areas—oncology, gastroenterology, neuroscience and rare disease. The goal will be for Takeda to take the preclinical candidates into the clinic and develop them. The two companies remained quiet on what the targets in those core therapeutic areas would be.
Charles River will use its drug discovery expertise and combine it with Takeda’s investments in human data and translation to deliver transformative medicines for patients. In its announcement, Charles River said it will “leverage its end-to-end drug discovery and safety assessment platform to explore potential therapeutic approaches and progress these programs towards candidate status.” The two companies will then have the option to advance those candidates into the clinic.
Under the terms of the agreement, Takeda will pay Charles River an undisclosed upfront fee. Charles River will be eligible to receive development payments with a potential value of over $50 million per program in preclinical and clinical milestones for candidates that progress to the clinic. The agreement also includes additional potential commercial milestones of up to $120 million, plus royalties on launched products, Charles River said in its announcement.
“By utilizing an integrated drug discovery and development approach, our goal is to deliver quality preclinical candidates to Takeda, helping to drive forward their innovative work in key therapeutic areas,” Birgit Girshick, head of Discovery & Safety Assessment, Biologics Testing Solutions, and Avian Vaccine Services at Charles River, said in a statement.
James C. Foster, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Charles River, said the company is pleased to expand its relationship with Takeda. He expects the strengths of the two companies will “prove to be a powerful combination in delivering novel drug candidates.”
Steve Hitchcock, global head of research at Takeda, agreed with Foster. He said the two companies have a long history of working together across the drug discovery and development portfolio. Hitchcock said he is confident that the experience of Charles River will benefit the deal.
For Takeda, the deal with Charles River comes hard on the heels of two deals struck in December. Takeda forged a collaboration worth up to $1 billion with Turnstone Biologics to tackle a number of cancer indications using that company’s vaccinia virus platform. The two companies will pair up to advance Turnstone’s lead program, RIVAL-01 in multiple cancer studies and will also work together to identify additional novel product candidates based on Turnstone’s vaccinia virus platform for future independent development.
One day before the Turnstone deal was announced, Takeda and Cerevance teamed up to tackle diseases of the gastrointestinal tract that have their roots in the central nervous system. The two companies will pair up to identify novel target proteins expressed in the central nervous system for the development of therapies targeting GI disorders, the companies announced at the time.
