Anima signs new strategic collaboration deal with Takeda

Anima Biotech has announced its new strategic collaboration deal with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company for the discovery and development of new medicines to combat genetically defined neurological diseases.

The US-based Anima is a leader in the discovery of small molecule drugs, which selectively control mRNA translation.

Under the agreement, Anima will employ its Translation Control Therapeutics platform for the discovery of new mRNA translation modulators that can be used against the collaboration targets.

Japan-based Takeda holds exclusive rights to develop and commercialise the molecules, which the two parties will collaborate to advance.

Anima will receive an upfront payment, including preclinical research milestone payments, of around $120m from Takeda. It will also receive about $1.1bn in clinical and commercial milestones upon success of the three programmes.

The collaboration also makes Anima eligible for tiered royalties on net sales of each product.

If the programmes are successful, Takeda has the option to expand the collaboration within a certain period of time, with up to three additional targets. This is however subject to additional payments of up to $1.2bn along with tiered royalties to Anima.

“Anima Biotech’s expertise in understanding the complex regulatory mechanisms of protein expression in the central nervous system makes them an ideal partner to explore this novel area of drug discovery,” said Ceri Davies, Head, Neuroscience Drug Discovery Unit at Takeda. “By combining Anima’s platform with our strength in translational medicine and clinical development, we aim to develop medicines that deliver greater benefits to patients with genetically-defined neurological diseases where there are non-existent or ineffective treatment options.”

“Partnering is a core strategy of Anima and our model is to build collaborations that maximize the probability of success by combining our discovery platform and expertise in translation control biology with the scientific, clinical and commercial capabilities of our partners,” said Yochi Slonim, Anima’s co-founder & CEO. “Takeda’s leadership and depth of scientific expertise in the CNS area is ideally suited for our second Pharma partnership in Neuroscience and further validates our leadership in mRNA translation control. We are looking forward to working together with Takeda in a true collaboration model.”