Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Osaka, Japan; President and CEO: Gyo Sagara; “Ono”) today announced that it has entered an agreement with KSQ Therapeutics (Lexington, MA, USA; CEO: Qasim Rizvi; “KSQ”), a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing therapies to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases, to aquire multiple research-stage DNA damage response (DDR) programs identified using KSQ’s proprietary, integrated discovery CRISPRomics platform technology.

 Under the terms of the agreement, Ono will acquire information and associated research assets related to multiple research-stage oncology programs and develop optimized therapeutic drug candidates acting on the novel oncology therapeutic targets identified by KSQ. Ono will retain worldwide exclusive development and commercialization rights to any drug candidates to be discovered by Ono. Ono will pay to KSQ up-front and potential R&D milestone payments (up to double-digit millions) with potential sales milestone (amounting up to the triple-digit millions), as well as royalties based on global net sales.

 “We appreciate the ability of KSQ's CRISPRomics platform technology to discover novel therapeutic targets with high selectivity for cancer cells,” said Toichi Takino, Senior Executive Officer/ Executive Director, Discovery & Research of Ono. “Through this acquisition agreement, we expect that the programs acquired from KSQ will lead to the creation of innovative medicines that will help treat cancer patients.”

 “This acquisition of multiple research-stage oncology programs by Ono is further validation of the power of our platform to identify novel oncology targets and develop potential first-in-class programs,” said Qasim Rizvi, Chief Executive Officer of KSQ. “This is an important transaction for KSQ, enabling us to focus on our other programs. We look forward to watching Ono’s progress as they advance these programs toward clinical studies.”