News

Kanagawa, Japan, 27th November 2025 – FIMECS, Inc. (headquartered in Fujisawa; President & CEO: Katsuhiro Uto, “FIMECS”), a private biotechnology company pioneering a new class of medicines through targeted protein degradation, is pleased to announce today that FIMECS has agreed with Astellas Pharma Inc. (“Astellas”) to add two new targets in their ongoing joint research. In connection with this agreement, FIMECS will receive a one-time payment of JPY 400 million from Astellas under the terms of the agreement.

FIMECS and Astellas entered into a joint research agreement (“Agreement”) in 2022 to conduct joint research on targeted protein degradation. Since then, under the terms of the Agreement, FIMECS has been collaborating with Astellas to discover protein degraders for multiple targets related to oncology, using FIMECS’s proprietary platform, RaPPIDS™, and achieved an initial milestone in a specific research program on May 2024. In the same research program, FIMECS completed the predefined joint research plan and proceeded to the next research stage on March 2025.

If a development candidate is identified and leads to the commercialization of a new pharmaceutical product, FIMECS may receive exceeding 15 billion yen based on the progress of development, regulatory, and sales milestones, as well as royalties in the single-digit percentage range of product sales.

Comment from Katsuhiro Uto, CEO of Fimecs:
“We are delighted to expand our collaboration with Astellas and initiate drug discovery for two additional targets. We believe that this addition reflects the strong recognition of the drug discovery capabilities of our RaPPIDS™ platform. We will continue to leverage the technological advantages of RaPPIDS™ through this partnership and strive to deliver innovative treatment options to patients.”

About FIMECS, Inc.
FIMECS, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of RaQualia Pharma (TSE:4579). The company is developing a new class of drugs based on targeted protein degradation for the currently ‘undruggable’ targets in immuno-oncology and oncology areas. By integrating proprietary E3 ligase binders and the RaPPIDS™ platform, FIMECS can discover drug candidates that induce the degradation of disease-relevant proteins. This drug discovery platform enable the company to deliver innovative drugs to patients worldwide through both internal and collaboration projects. https://www.fimecs.com/eng/

# # #

FIMECS, Inc. Media and Investor Contact:
FIMECS, Inc.
26-1, Muraoka-Higashi 2-chome, Fujisawa, Kanagawa 251-0012, Japan
Tel: +81-466-96-0261

E-mail: info@fimecs.com