Charles River has entered a multi-year drug discovery collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. to launch multiple integrated programs across Takeda’s four core therapeutic areas—oncology, gastroenterology, neuroscience, and rare disease—with the goal of delivering preclinical candidates that Takeda can advance into clinical development.

The alliance combines Charles River’s drug discovery expertise with Takeda’s investments in human data and translation to deliver transformative medicines aligned with Takeda’s therapeutic strategies in oncology, gastrointestinal disease, neuroscience and rare disease. Charles River will leverage its drug discovery and safety assessment platform to explore potential therapeutic approaches and progress these programs towards candidate status. Takeda will then have the option to advance the preclinical candidates through their clinical development pipeline.

Charles River will receive a one-time, upfront fee and is eligible to receive development payments with a potential value of over $50 million per program in preclinical and clinical milestones for candidates that progress to registration. The agreement also includes additional potential commercial milestones of up to $120 million plus royalties on launched products.

“We are pleased to expand our relationship with Takeda, who shares our commitment to bring innovative, safe, and effective medicines to patients as quickly and efficiently as possible. We expect the expertise of Charles River and Takeda will prove to be a powerful combination in delivering novel drug candidates,” said James C. Foster, chairman, president and chief executive officer at Charles River.

“Takeda has a long history of working with Charles River across our drug discovery and development portfolio and are confident in their breadth of experience and commitment to excellent science. Leveraging Charles River’s integrated discovery capabilities is a natural extension of our relationship,” said Steve Hitchcock, Ph.D., global head of Research at Takeda.