Cambridge, UK, December 9, 2024 – Mestag Therapeutics (“Mestag”), a biotech company harnessing new insights into fibroblast-immune interactions, today announced that Johnson & Johnson* has exclusively licensed a novel, undisclosed target identified using Mestag’s Reversing Activated Fibroblast Technology (RAFT) platform under the multi-year target discovery collaboration announced in 2021.
Activated fibroblasts play a key role in immune regulation in inflammatory disease, and Johnson & Johnson’s license of a new target identified during our collaboration exemplifies the capabilities of our target discovery platform.
Susan Hill, PhD
Chief Executive Officer of Mestag
Mestag’s unique and proprietary RAFT platform is purposely built to precisely model the role of pathogenic fibroblasts in disease, including its interactions with the immune system as well as other cell types, to identify novel targets.
Under the collaboration, Mestag applied the RAFT platform to model the biology of pathogenic fibroblast populations in human disease and used genetic knock out screening to identify new therapeutic targets. Johnson & Johnson shall control, at its discretion, all potential development and commercialization of therapeutics directed against the licensed target. Mestag is eligible to receive future downstream payments.
*Legal entity, Janssen Biotech, Inc.
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