Top Japanese drugmakers Astellas Pharma, Daiichi Sankyo and Takeda Pharmaceutical announced a pact to develop a biomarker database of healthy patients that will be managed by a Netherlands-based CRO and could be used in clinical studies and shared with in-house and outside researchers.
Under the terms, each company will use their own facilities to collect and analyze biomarker data and meld the data into a wider pool--with the findings to be released publicly.
"Samples will be acquired at a clinical research organization associated with Leiden University in the Netherlands and be under the supervision of Dr. Thomas Hankemeier, professor at Leiden University," according to a joint statement.
"The analysis results will be mainly utilized in the companies’ therapeutic areas of focus. Data gained from this analysis will be publicized so that it may be widely utilized in various types of drug discovery research to meet patients’ unmet needs."
The effort by the companies, according to the statement, will feed into therapeutic focus areas. In the case of Astellas, these will be urology, oncology, immunology, nephrology, neuroscience, muscle diseases and ophthalmology.
For Daiichi Sankyo, the areas listed covered oncology and newer targets in pain, CNS (central nervous system) diseases, heart and kidney disease and rare diseases; for Takeda, gastroenterology, oncology, CNS and vaccines.