Aiming at Development of a Data-driven New Drug Discovery Platform
based on a Large-scale Transcriptome Analysis Technology

 Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Osaka, Japan; President and CEO, Gyo Sagara; “ONO”) and Knowledge Palette, Inc. (Kanagawa, Japan; Representative Director and CEO, Hiroki Danno; Representative Director and CTO, Masakazu Fukuda; “Knowledge Palette”) announced that the companies have entered into an agreement to expand the research collaboration aiming to build a data-driven new drug discovery platform using Knowledge Palette’s large-scale transcriptome analysis technology.

 Based on the collaborative research contract executed in November 2021, ONO and Knowledge Palette have conducted a feasibility study for a data-driven development of novel drug discovery hypotheses by using larger-scale data and informatics than ever.

 In this expanded contract of research collaboration, the entire picture of gene expression patterns in human cells treated with various compounds and in those given perturbations such as gene function inhibition will be compiled into a database using Knowledge Palette's large-scale transcriptome analysis technology. Using the database leveraging with informatics approach, comprehensive cellular data will be analyzed to reveal numerous molecular mechanisms for hypothetical novel drug discovery targets, which leads to develop a platform of data driven drug discovery. In the future, it is expected that the acquisition of comprehensive cellular data on a higher precision and larger scale will lead to the development of new drug discovery hypotheses for a wide range of disease areas.

 “ONO highly appreciates Knowledge Palette’s R&D platform based on its single-cell transcriptome analysis technology (Quartz-Seq2). With this expanded contract of research collaboration with Knowledge Palette, we look forward to further expanding development pipeline for innovative drugs,” said Toichi Takino, Senior Executive Officer and Executive Director, Discovery & Research of ONO.

 “Knowledge Palette is engaged in the new phenotypic drugs discovery by utilizing whole-genome gene expression profile and informatics. By adding the large-scale and comprehensive cellular phenotype data obtained through this collaborative research to the database of our platform, we will be able to explore and create many new drug discovery hypotheses and search for candidates of new drugs and seeds of cell therapies with higher development success rates,” said Hiroki Danno, Representative Director & CEO of Knowledge Palette.

About Knowledge Palette

 Knowledge Palette is a Japanese biotechnology company conducting phenotypic drug discovery, biomarker identification, and improvement of regenerative medicine manufacturing based on its single-cell transcriptome analysis technology (Quartz-Seq2), which was ranked No.1 for both accuracy scores and overall scores in an international benchmark project in 2020. Knowledge Palette is collaborating with pharmaceutical companies and research institutes on the acceleration of drug discovery as well as optimization of cell culturing for regenerative medicine.