HemoShear Therapeutics, LLC, a privately held clinical stage biotechnology company, has entered into a research collaboration and service agreement with Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. Under the terms of the agreement, HemoShear will receive an upfront payment and funding to develop a new human tissue-based model of a rare liver disease using the company’s REVEAL-Tx™ Platform. REVEAL-Tx™ combines physiological and computational models of disease to identify novel treatment approaches and select drug candidates in a human-relevant disease context.
HemoShear has a successful ongoing three-year collaboration with Takeda to discover and develop novel therapeutics for liver diseases, including nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH).
“We are excited to expand our collaboration with Takeda into modeling rare liver diseases,” said Brian Wamhoff, PhD, chief operating officer and head of innovation, HemoShear. “Our unique ability to recreate models of complex rare diseases will enable Takeda to interrogate their drug targets in the genetic background of human disease and select lead candidates in an accelerated timeframe.”
“We have identified and validated innovative targets through our existing partnership with HemoShear that we continue to explore in early research,” said Gareth Hicks, Ph.D., GI Drug Discovery Unit Head at Takeda. “This new collaboration gives us the opportunity to build on that momentum and expand the reach of our combined expertise to a challenging, severe rare liver disease of high unmet need.”