AMRI and Ono Broaden SMARTSOURCING™ Collaboration

AMRI has announced that it has entered into a new five-year service agreement with Ono Pharmaceutical Company, Ltd., (TSE: 4528), a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Osaka, Japan.

Under the terms of the agreement, AMRI may provide a range of services from early drug discovery to cGMP manufacturing.

The two companies have already agreed to medicinal chemistry projects within the new framework to collaborate on additional hit-to-lead and lead optimization for two new molecules, with the work to take place at AMRI’s medicinal chemistry laboratories in Albany, N.Y.

An early adopter of the AMRI SMARTSOURCING™ concept, Ono has been utilizing AMRI’s integrated global facilities and capabilities for projects ranging from early drug discovery, including high-throughput screening (HTS), biology support and computer-aided drug discovery (CADD), to multiple medicinal chemistry programs and a variety of drug development and cGMP programs.

Thomas E. D’Ambra, Ph.D., Chairman, President and CEO of AMRI said, “We are pleased to extend and broaden our service agreement with Ono. During the past few years, Ono has become a very important client for AMRI and we would like to acknowledge the deepening relationship between our companies. Our project management teams and the scientists on all the Ono projects, from Singapore to the United States, enjoy working with our counterparts at Ono and they are a valuable customer and partner.”

Louis Garguilo, Vice President of Business Development, said, “SMARTSOURCING™ is an industry leading movement to strategic decision making and the true measurement of results and success in drug discovery, development and manufacturing. Over the years, our relationship with Ono has grown based on this type of value-added collaboration. We are also happy to announce this expanding relationship in conjunction with the 2013 Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) International Convention in Chicago, at the one-year anniversary of our re-branding launch of AMRI SMARTSOURCING™ at this very show last year in Boston.”

Kazuhito Kawabata, Ph.D., Member of the Board of Directors, Executive Officer and Executive Director, Discovery and Research of Ono, said, “We appreciate AMRI’s integrated capabilities and global reach, and believe that they are the partner of choice to mutually work toward the best decisions and outcomes for many of our projects. We look forward to continuing our relationship across the drug discovery and development areas.”