Nippon Shokubai in HDO licence

Nippon Shokubai has concluded a licence agreement with its Japanese compatriot and affiliate company, Rena Therapeutics, to make and sell heteroduplex oligonucleotide (HDO) as a research reagent to industry and academia in all countries where it is covered by patents. Rena has existing licences with Ionis Pharmaceuticals and Takeda Pharmaceutical.

HDO is described a fundamental drug discovery platform technology in which ligand molecules providing a drug delivery system combine with a double strand composed of the antisense strand and its complementary carrier strand, RNA. The technology is expected to help overcome some issues with oligonucleotide drugs, because it can selectively deliver the active strand to the disease site.