Ono Pharma, Jorna Therapeutics Join Forces to Develop RNA-Editing Drugs

Japan-based Ono Pharmaceutical has entered into a partnership with the United States' Jorna Therapeutics to develop innovative RNA-editing therapeutics. Announced in December, the collaboration builds on Jorna's proprietary RNA editing platform as well as Jorna's AI model, SkyEngine, which is constructed on quantum mechanics-based AI, for both companies to develop unique therapies. This technology will enable the precise design of RNA-editing drug sequences.

According to the agreement, Ono Pharma will have exclusive worldwide rights to explore, develop, and market the resultant candidates. This further strengthens Ono's position in RNA therapeutics while anchoring further development in drug development, particularly nucleic acid-based therapies.

The payment includes upfront payments to Jorna, research funding, and milestone payments. With an ability to induce mutations in target RNA, Jorna combines AI with high-throughput systems to develop therapeutic opportunities for patients with little hope of available treatment. Its SkyEngine platform supports rapid, safe and atomic level accurate amino acid design, as well as protein folding pathways for efficient and accurate design of protein.

In line with this, the current collaboration follows Ono Pharma's partnership with Congruence Therapeutics early in 2023 towards developing small-molecule correctors utilizing Congruence's Revenir platform, an examination platform of protein dynamics altered by mutations. Collectively, these alliances further signify strategic moves by Ono to adopt leading technologies into selfish methods for drug discovery.

"We are delighted to collaborate with Ono to advance our shared vision of delivering groundbreaking therapies to patients. This partnership is expected to accelerate efforts to bring RNA editing-based therapies to market by leveraging Ono’s global resources and expertise", said Chengwei Luo, Founder & CEO, Jorna.

"We highly value Jorna’s unique generative AI technologies, which combine large-scale amino acid sequence information and language models to design desired proteins. Through this partnership, we aim to accelerate drug development using RNA editing technology and provide new treatment options to patients around the world with unmet medical needs", said Seishi Katsumata, Ono Pharmaceutical Discovery and Research Executive Director.