Japan-based Ono Pharmaceutical has entered a worldwide drug discovery collaboration agreement with Poland's Captor Therapeutics S.A., a leader in the development of Targeted Protein Degradation (TPD)-based drugs, to develop novel small molecule degrader drugs against a currently undrugged target of interest in neurodegenerative diseases.

Under the terms of the agreement, Captor will identify and characterise degrader drug candidates using its Optigrade TPD platform. Ono will have an exclusive option to license global rights to such candidates for further development and commercialisation. Ono will pay to Captor an up-front payment, R&D funding, and success-based milestone payments with a total value of up to €197 million, as well as tiered royalties based on global net sales.

TPD is an approach using carefully designed small molecule drugs that can divert the body’s natural process for degrading proteins to eliminate specifically targeted disease-causing proteins. The selective destruction of such proteins is expected to have multiple advantages over classical drugs such as inhibitors and antibodies for the development of novel therapeutics against a broad range of diseases, including in common neurodegenerative diseases.