Toray Industries, Inc., announced today that it concluded a collaborative agreement with the University of Tsukuba on October 1. They have since launched the Special Joint Research Project on Healthy Longevity and Patient Quality of Life at a new university unit. This five-year initiative will integrate Toray’s drug discovery and medical technology with the university’s expertise, infrastructure, and network to address the challenges of an aging society by improving the quality of life for the elderly and patients with progressive diseases.
Related Toray offerings to date have included Dorner Tablets 20μg, an oral prostacyclin (PGI2) derivative, REMITCH® OD Tablets 2.5μg for treating pruritus, and the Toray APOA2-iTQ in vitro diagnostic test kit to aid in diagnosing pancreatic cancer. In recent years, it has become more challenging to develop and commercialize new drugs, so the company is pursuing open innovation to enhance R&D efficiency and precision.
The University of Tsukuba was founded in 1873. It is one of Japan’s top comprehensive universities. It conducts extensive research and development with a view to commercialization by fostering work across disciplines and collaborating with researchers and experts in a range of fields in line with its distinctive interdisciplinary program approach. The university employs advanced facilities and systems for life science research, exploring drug discovery targets and uncovering disease mechanisms. Its industry-academia collaboration efforts have proven highly productive. It undertakes around 500 joint research projects annually with companies in life sciences and other fields, and files more than 100 patent applications each year. Toray and the university will advance life sciences research by harnessing that institution’s unique Special Joint Research Project approach, framing common issues for companies and academia, and striving to resolve them.
Toray will leverage this project to pursue more advanced and efficient life sciences research by collaborating with personnel in the university’s Institute of Medicine and drawing on the university’s research infrastructure.
In engaging in drug discovery research employing proprietary technologies and seeds, Toray’s preclinical studies have identified several promising compounds in recent years. One could help improve cancer cachexia and muscle weakness in aged mice, another serves as an alternative to morphine for relieving pain. Some other candidate harnesses a novel action mechanism to treat peripheral neuropathy.
The joint research will conduct a detailed analysis of action mechanisms for Toray’s candidate treatment compounds, including by using genetically modified animals, to enhance clinical development success rates for drug candidates. This detailed mechanism analysis will tap cryo-electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, and other techniques to learn about the three-dimensional structure of body proteins at the molecular level. This work will clarify interactions between candidate therapeutic compounds and target proteins, as well as the binding states of biological substances. The resulting knowledge should help streamline research and development into pharmaceuticals and such in vitro diagnostic agents as small-molecule compounds and test kits.
This project seeks to enhance the value of product candidates in life sciences while fostering partnerships with pharmaceutical companies and establishing university-based venture companies to accelerate commercialization. Another goal is to contribute to social progress by swiftly delivering effective pharmaceutical and medical products to patients.
