Daiichi Sankyo Sponsored Research Program

Focus on early-stage drug discovery and life sciences research fitting Daiichi Sankyo's strategic areas of interest:

1) Oncology:
- Novel targets or research on tumor immunotherapy to overcome ICI insensitivity or resistance
- Pancreatic ducutal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) models which reflects human PDAC features, and better than known genetically  engineered mouse models (GEMM) like KPC (KRAS, TP53)
- Unique antibodies or binders, applicable to mono- or multi-specific antibodies and/or cell therapy, against tumor-associated antigens, which include tumor, immune, and stromal cell targets
- Novel technologies for adoptive T cell therapy

2) Immune-related diseases:
- Novel therapeutic targets or novel target identification involved in refractory immune diseases or fibrosis. New targets are those that have not been tested in clinical trials and may also be known molecules
- Novel drug target validation tools which mimicks pathological mechanism of refractory immune-inflammatory disorders (such as pulmonary fibrosis diseases, interstitial lung disease, and autoimmune disease with neuropsychiatric symptoms)

3) CNS
- Unique research on psychiatrc diseases which can pave the way to novel drug development. Focused diseases: Major Depression Disorder, Anxiety disorder, Schizophrenia, Autism Spectrum Disorder
- Unique research on neurodegenerative diseases which can pave the way to novel drug development. Focused diseases: Alzheimer's Disease, Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration, Parkinson's Disease, Maltiple System Atrophy, Dementia with Levybody, Amyotrophic Lateral Aclerosis

4) Organ protection
- Novel therapeutic target for NASH and/or target identification for NASH based on unique screening platform (Out of scope: MOA reducing TG in liver)
- Innovative research to provide novel therapeutic targets for HFrEF, HFpEF using human myocardial samples or organoid derived from HF patients

5) Ophthalmic diseases
- Research on Drug Target Molecules/Mechanism for intermediate or non-exudative age-Related Macular Degeneration
- Research on Drug Target Molecules/Mechanism for Gene-independent Therapy of Retinitis Pigmentosa

6) Mechanism based strategy
- Novel target genes whose expression needs to be repressed for therapeutic purposes (Our focus is CNS, but the scope is not limited to CNS. Our scope also includes liver, muscle, heart, pancreas and so on)
- Non-coding RNA or NMD-sensitive mRNA which work as therapeutic target