Ono enters AI research collaboration with Healx

Japanese drug major Ono Pharmaceutical (TYO: 4528) has entered into a research collaboration agreement with Cambridge, UK-based Healx Limited, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven biopharmaceutical company, on Healx’ unique AI technology to jointly discover and develop novel, efficacious treatment drugs for diseases with unmet medical needs.

Under the accord, Healx will use Healnet, the core of Healx’ AI drug discovery platform, to identify potential indications for Ono’s proprietary assets. Ono will select diseases from Healx’ therapeutic recommendations and conduct verification studies on Ono’s compound assets for selected diseases. Ono retains exclusive rights to develop and commercialize compounds for the indications selected through this collaboration worldwide, and in return, will pay Healx an undisclosed research fee during the collaboration period, as well as development and sales milestones.

“We extremely appreciate Healx‘ AI technology, Healnet, for discovering new therapies that meet unmet medical needs in rare diseases,” said Toichi Takino, a member of the board, senior executive officer and executive director, discovery and research, adding: "By combining the profiling data of new drug candidates and Healx' AI technology, we expect to increase efficiency of finding clinical indications with high prediction accuracy and identifying new drug candidates."