Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Osaka, Japan; President and CEO: Gyo Sagara; “Ono”) today announced that it has entered into a multi target R&D collaboration agreement with PrecisionLife Limited (Oxford, UK; CEO: Steve Gardner; “PrecisionLife”), a global techbio company generating the deepest insights into disease biology to create novel precision medicines in chronic diseases, to identify novel therapeutic targets and patient stratification biomarkers in central nervous system (CNS) disorders for development by Ono.

 Under the agreement, PrecisionLife will apply its combinatorial analytics platform to patient datasets to find multiple new therapeutic targets for development by Ono. PrecisionLife will use its considerable drug discovery expertise to provide Ono with a clear rationale for selection of targets with genetic validation and mechanistic hypotheses, preclinical validation, and patient stratification biomarkers to optimize clinical development of the assets. Ono will select targets from PrecisionLife’s recommendations and acquire the worldwide rights to develop and commercialize a pharmaceutical product acting on the target.

 “We appreciate PrecisionLife’s unique combinatorial analytics platform for discovering new therapies that meet specific medical needs in complex central nervous system diseases,” said Toichi Takino, Senior Executive Officer / Executive Director, Discovery & Research of Ono. “We expect to increase the efficiency of finding new drug candidates that bring much needed new therapeutic options to patients through this new collaboration.”

 “We are excited to work with Ono on this precision neuroscience collaboration as it brings together our novel insights into complex disease biology with Ono’s extensive drug development expertise,” said Dr Steve Gardner, CEO of PrecisionLife. “We expect this to bring forward effective new treatment options addressing the currently unmet medical needs of key patient subgroups in some of the most challenging common CNS diseases.”