IP Generator, Inc., (“IPG”) and La Jolla Institute for Immunology (“LJI”), based in La Jolla, California, USA, have entered into a Master Collaborative Research and Development Agreement (“this agreement”) dated May 12, 2022. This agreement establishes a formal framework for the incorporation of promising drug target leads from LJI into IPG’s drug discovery platform.
The program enables LJI to propose drug targets to IPG for identification and development of lead compounds or modalities with the goal of licensing clinical development candidates to pharmaceutical companies. IPG aims for the efficient creation of innovative medicines and hopes to contribute to solving global social issues by reducing healthcare costs and expanding access to medicine.
For patients, personalized medicine holds great promise for the effective treatment and prevention of disease. For the pharmaceutical industry, personalized medicine provides the opportunity to achieve substantial clinical advances by tailoring treatments to the genes and personal circumstances that make every patient different.
The increasing ability to distinguish between molecular subtypes and individual variations of disease puts growing demand on R&D to provide a wide variety of drugs to meet the individual medical needs of small group of patients. The smaller market size for highly personalized treatments requires increasingly efficient drug development.
In an effort to fast-track the development of highly personalized treatments that target known disease markers, IPG will invite global academia, pharmaceutical companies, and other entities to submit promising drug leads. This agreement between IPG and LJI is considered to be the significant first step toward the accelerated incorporation of drug discovery seeds from academia.
“New biological insights are opening up new therapeutic opportunities,” Erica Ollmann Saphire, PhD, President and CEO of LJI, states. “Partnering with IPG allows us to validate drug targets that are indeed relevant to the biology of the disease and thus bring our discoveries closer to patients who stand to benefit from highly personalized treatments.”
“It is our great pleasure and honor to have this agreement with LJI which is one of the most prestigious institutes in the world with long term track record of valuable scientific findings in Immunology.” Mr. Satoru Iino, President and CEO of IPG states. “This enables IPG to access to promising drug discovery seeds and to create highly innovative medicines. In this sense, IPG moves forward to contributing to solve the global social issues such as high healthcare costs and to extend the healthy life expectancy.”
[About IPG]
IPG was established on October 26, 2021, as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Healthcare New Platform Fund where Whiz. Partners Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Atsushi Matsumura) has been the general partner. IPG will generate composition of matter patents for new chemical entities by conducting non-clinical research and development activities and make variety of transactions mainly with pharmaceutical companies. IPG has already concluded a comprehensive partnership agreement with Axcelead, Inc. and Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners, Inc. (http://ip-g.coｍ/jp/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/0c91379ab46f05f47d691359e8e8c721.pdf). By collaborating among the parties to build a next stage drug discovery platform, it would be possible to generate high quality innovative pharmaceuticals in a shorter period of time and lower cost. As for the pharmaceutical industry, the trend of the horizontal division of labor business model would be more accelerating. IPG plays a role as a platformer for creating pre-clinical stage innovative new medicines.
[About LJI]
The La Jolla Institute for Immunology is dedicated to understanding the intricacies and power of the immune system so that we may apply that knowledge to promote human health and prevent a wide range of diseases. Since its founding in 1988 as an independent, nonprofit research organization, the Institute has made numerous advances leading toward its goal: life without disease.