Teijin and Axcelead team up to develop new drugs
Japanese companies Teijin and Axcelead announced that they have signed an agreement to combine capital and business to create a joint venture that will primarily use Teijin’s research capabilities, equipment and personnel for drug discovery. The partners will have to decide on the name of the new company, allocate ownership shares and clarify some other details in order to reach a final agreement during the fiscal year ending March 2024.
Through this alliance, Teijin and Teijin Pharma hope to innovate and expand drug development research to launch medicines with high medical needs as soon as possible. Teijin Pharma and Teijin focus on solving patient problems, while Axcelead provides non-clinical drug discovery services to meet the needs of bio-factories and other pharmaceutical companies around the world.
This core agreement, which aligns with Axcelead’s vision of co-creating drug development platforms, is in line with the global trend of horizontal specialization in preclinical research and new forms of outsourced research.
Teijin Pharma is searching for new drug candidates at the Teijin Biomedical Research Institute in Tokyo, using its patented technologies and resources through collaborations with universities and other companies in Japan and abroad.
Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners (Axcelead DDP) launched in July 2017, replacing Takeda Pharmaceutical Company’s drug discovery platform. Axcelead DDP, which has almost all the necessary capabilities for drug development, provides one-stop services ranging from target drug discovery to candidate compound optimization and transition processes to clinical development.
About Teijin Limited
Teijin Limited (Teijin Kabushiki-gaisha) is a large Japanese chemical, pharmaceutical and information technology company. The main business areas are healthcare, pharmaceutical and IT product development, high performance fibers such as aramid, carbon fibers and composites, films, resin and plastic processing, polyester fibers, product recycling. The Teijin Group includes 151 companies, 56 of which are in Japan and 95 are overseas. Teijin is a member of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFJ).
About Axcelead
Axcelead is the holding company based on Axcelead DDP and a group of healthcare platform companies including ARCALIS, which manages Japan’s only end-to-end mRNA contract development. Has a manufacturing business (CDMO) and PassPort Technologies, which has a new generation of transdermal drug delivery technology. Axcelead is currently working on the Druggable Target 1000 project, which was announced on December 2, 2021, in collaboration with FRONTEO Corporation, which uses AI to analyze the potential of target molecules in drug development. Axcelead DDP is Japan’s first integrated drug discovery solution provider and took over Takeda’s drug discovery platform in July 2017.