Product details

In July 2023, Japanese pharma major Astellas Pharma Inc (Astellas) joined forces with another Japanese company PeptiDream Inc (PeptiDream) in the form of a partnership and license agreement aiming to discover new targeted protein degraders. As agreed, Astellas would have the option of selecting certain additional disease targets on top of its responsibility to develop and commercialise products that would result from the collaboration. The partnership would see PeptiDream's Peptide Discovery Platform System (PDPS) technology merge with the drug discovery capabilities of Astellas to enhance the discovery of several next-generation protein degraders hitting diverse targets going beyond existing technologies. While both the companies were quite upbeat about joining forces, drug discovery itself happened to be fraught with diverse challenges. Would the collaboration succeed in drug discovery business surmounting all those challenges?