Cooperation between Otsuka pharmaceutical and MSD in the development of KRAS inhibitors

Today, MSD announced that it will develop small molecule anticancer drugs, including KRAS inhibitors, in cooperation with Taiho and Astex of Otsuka pharmaceutical MSD will pay a down payment of US $50 million and a total of US $2.5 billion for various odometers The three companies will merge pre clinical related projects and share technical secrets MSD will acquire the exclusive global rights and interests of the products under research, and be responsible for the R & D and marketing of these projects Taiho will retain some rights and interests in Japan and the Asia Pacific region Astex, originally a UK company, was acquired by Otsuka in 2013 Now, we have two cooperation projects with Taiho, another subsidiary of Otsuka Among them, cedazuridine and decitabine combination astx727 have achieved clinical success in a phase III clinical project called ascertain, but sgi-110 (guadecitabine), the main asset, failed in a phase III clinical project of first-line AML in 2018 The core competitiveness of Astex is a pyramid Gamma Based on the platform of fragment drug design (FBDD), this technology is sometimes more efficient than HTS for difficult drug targets Venatoclax, the BCL inhibitor, was found by this technology It is generally believed that traditional HTS technology is difficult to find this drug However, FBDD rarely finds such a difficult drug, which is also a technology that needs to be improved, but at least provides a new approach.