Jnana Therapeutics inks deal with Roche

Privately-held US start-up Jnana Therapeutics has entered a strategic, multi-target collaboration and license agreement with Roche (ROG: SIX) for the discovery of small molecule drugs directed at the solute carrier (SLC) family of metabolite transporters as a broad, innovative approach for modulating cellular metabolism to treat immune-mediated and neurological diseases.

The drug discovery and research activities under the Roche-Jnana collaboration will leverage Jnana’s RAPID platform which is designed to overcome the challenges of directly targeting SLC transporters, a protein family diverse in structure and mechanism, and with a wide range of substrates and cellular locales.

Under the terms of the agreement, Jnana will partner with Roche on discovery and pre-clinical development for a broad set of targets across immunology and neuroscience, which Roche will further develop and commercialize exclusively.