Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Osaka, Japan; President, Representative Director, Gyo Sagara; ”Ono”) today announced that it has signed an expanded drug discovery collaboration agreement with Neurimmune AG (Zurich, Switzerland; CEO, Roger M Nitsch; “Neurimmune”). The collaboration is focused on creating antibody drugs against new therapeutic targets in the field of neurodegenerative diseases utilizing Neurimmune’s proprietary Reverse Translational Medicine™ (“RTM™”) technology platform, a unique antibody drug creation approach.

　In November 2017, Ono and Neurimmune signed a first drug discovery collaboration agreement to identify and develop human-derived monoclonal antibodies using the RTM™ technology platform.
　In the new collaboration, the companies aim to generate and validate human-derived monoclonal antibodies against Ono’s newly selected drug targets. Ono will obtain exclusive rights for worldwide development and commercialization of antibody products resulting from the collaboration. Ono will pay to Neurimmune an upfront payment, research fees, success-based milestones on the research and development progress, as well as royalties on product sales.

　“We extremely appreciate Neurimmune’s RTM™ technology platform as an excellent antibody creation technology through our drug discovery projects.” said Toichi Takino, Senior Executive Officer / Executive Director, Discovery & Research of Ono Pharmaceutical. “Through this new collaboration, we will expand our central nervous system disease portfolio and work to deliver innovative medicines to patients with neurodegenerative diseases.”

　“We are excited to expand our long-term trusted partnership with Ono, a global pioneer of innovative medicines,” said Jan Grimm, CSO of Neurimmune. “The joint goal of the collaboration is to discover novel drug candidates for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases using RTM™ technology.”

About Reverse Translational Medicine™ (RTM™) Technology Platform

　RTM™ is Neurimmune’s proprietary technology platform. It is based on the scientific understanding and high-throughput analyses of human immune responses to disease-related proteins in selected populations including elderly with the capability to stay healthy during the aging process. The technology translates the genetic information obtained from human white blood cells into selective high affinity antibody candidates. Neurimmune’s human monoclonal antibody therapeutics combine the full range of advantages provided by human affinity maturation and tolerance selection. These processes were optimized through human evolution over millions of years for unsurpassed efficacy and safety.

About Neurimmune

　Neurimmune is a biopharmaceutical company translating human immune memory into transformative antibody therapeutics. Neurimmune develops drug candidates for CNS and related protein aggregation diseases including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), frontotemporal dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies and ATTR cardiomyopathy. Neurimmune discovered aducanumab, a human monoclonal antibody that removes amyloid beta from brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and licensed it to Biogen. With its RTM™ technology, Neurimmune also discovered the anti-miSOD1 antibody AP-101 for ALS and the anti-ATTR antibody NI006 for ATTR cardiomyopathy, programs being currently evaluated in clinical trials. Neurimmune has three additional antibody programs in preclinical development, and has recently expanded the spectrum of its treatment modalities by adding a small molecule program and programs involving vectorized expression of human antibody genes. For more information, visit https://www.neurimmune.com/ .