International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine, University of Tsukuba (“WPI-IIIS”) today announced a research collaboration agreement with Merck & Co., Inc.,
Kenilworth, N.J., U.S.A., known as MSD outside the United States and Canada. Under the agreement, WPI-IIIS and Merck will perform collaborative research aimed at discovering new medicines for disorders of the central nervous system. This is the first significant collaborations for the University of Tsukuba with an overseas company.
“I am very pleased to establish this collaborative research agreement with Merck. By combining the basic research conducted in our institute and the drug discovery expertise at Merck, we hope to deliver new medicines to the patients,” said Masashi Yanagisawa, director of WPI-IIIS.
Based on the agreement, Yanagisawa, Hiroshi Nagase (principal investigator of WPI-IIIS) and their colleagues will conduct drug discovery in collaboration with central nervous system researchers at Merck.
The collaboration will also encourage interactions between scientists involved in the field of drug discovery, accelerating the exploration of new treatment options for disorders of the central nervous system.