Johnson & Johnson follows MSD to climb aboard Mestag’s RAFT

The agreement has emerged from a 2021 target discovery, option and license agreement with Janssen Biotech, Inc., which is a part of J&J.

Mestag, which is harnessing new insights into fibroblast-immune interactions, reveals that J & J has exclusively licensed a novel, undisclosed target identified using its Reversing Activated Fibroblast Technology (RAFT) platform under the 2021 deal.

Susan Hill, Mestag’s CEO, said: “Activated fibroblasts play a key role in immune regulation in inflammatory disease and Johnson & Johnson’s licensing of a new target identified during our collaboration exemplifies the capabilities of our target discovery platform.”

RAFT is purpose-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 latest 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 will control, at its discretion, all potential development and commercialisation of therapeutics directed against the licensed target. Mestag is eligible to receive future, unspecified downstream payments.

Mestag’s founding investigators comprise global experts in inflammatory disease, cancer, computational biology and fibroblast biology from the University of Oxford, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

The business is supported by leading life science investors SV Health Investors, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., Forbion, GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Northpond Ventures.