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TOKYO, Dec. 18, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — PRISM BioLab, Co. Ltd. (“PRISM”) and Talus Bioscience, Inc. (“Talus Bio”) announced today that they entered into a collaboration to discover novel Inhibitors of transcription factor (TF) and protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets. By combining Talus Bio’s assay technologies for screening for TF and PPI inhibitors in native cellular environment with PRISM’s chemistry designed to target protein-protein interactions, companies are in a unique position to discover and develop drugs against these challenging targets.
Under the agreement, the companies will deploy PRISM’s proprietary small-molecule libraries in Talus Bio’s AI-guided regulome profiling screens to identify and optimize novel compounds against high-value TF and PPI targets. The collaboration aims to generate first-in-class chemical matter with direct functional effects on TF and PPI activity in live human cells. Talus Bio and PRISM will share the costs of discovery research and development and any profits generated from out-licensing and commercialization of discovered drug products.
“We are delighted to partner with Talus Bio on this exciting project”, commented Dai Takehara, PRISM’s President and CEO. “We at PRISM have developed chemistries for PPI targets, but because of the complex nature of these targets, it is often challenging to properly model protein-protein interactions in a biochemical assay. Even when we are successful, we can interrogate only one target at a time, whereas Talus Bio technologies can interrogate hundreds to thousands of these targets in parallel and in their native environment. We believe that the combination of PRISM’s chemistry platform and Talus Bio’s regulome analysis platform has a potential to discover a plethora of inhibitors against previously “undruggable” TF and PPI targets and open a path for the development of novel therapeutics.
“This collaboration gives us an unprecedented opportunity to pursue targets that have resisted conventional drug discovery,” said Alex Federation, PhD, CEO and Co-Founder of Talus Bio. “Integrating PRISM’s chemistry with Talus Bio’s regulome profiling and AI models allows us to see, in real time, how compounds reshape transcriptional networks in human cells. It’s a step-change in our ability to drug the undruggable.”
This collaboration represents a pivotal step for both companies in establishing a systematic, scalable strategy to address TF and PPI targets. Together, PRISM and Talus Bio are creating a unified platform capable of revealing and modulating regulatory mechanisms that have remained undruggable for decades. By combining PRISM’s PepMetics® technology with Talus Bio’s regulome profiling capabilities, the collaboration opens the door to therapies addressing diseases caused by previously undruggable targets.
About Talus Biosciences
Talus Bio is making the regulome accessible to drug discovery. Founded in 2020, the Seattle-based company’s platform generates global profiles of the regulome, including transcription factors and other DNA regulators directly in native human cells. These quantitative maps of regulome activity unlock new avenues to target historically “undruggable” proteins that function within the regulome.
This data is leveraged to build a lab-in-the-loop AI system to discover and optimize small molecules with direct effects on regulome activity. With the world’s most comprehensive regulome activity dataset and a multidisciplinary team spanning high-throughput proteomics, machine learning, and AI-native drug discovery, Talus Bio is unlocking a new generation of precision therapeutics.
About PRISM BioLab
PRISM BioLab is a discovery and development biotechnology company utilizing proprietary PepMetics® technology to discover orally available small molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets and transform lives of patients suffering from cancer, autoimmune, fibrosis and other diseases. PepMetics® are a unique class of small molecules that mimic three-dimensional structures of alpha-helix and beta-turn, the peptide structures commonly found in intracellular PPI interphases and receptor-ligand interactions. By combining proprietary chemistry, know-how around PPI targets and structure-based design, PepMetics® technology can deliver inhibitors of challenging PPI targets. The technology holds promise to expand the field of drug discovery by turning previously undruggable PPIs into targets readily druggable with small molecules and by generating oral small molecule alternatives for injectable biologics.
PRISM BioLab is collaborating on new PPI targets with global and Japanese pharmaceutical companies. PepMetics® targeting CBP/beta-catenin PPIs licensed to Eisai Co., Ltd. and Ohara Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. are in clinical development for cancer and liver disease, respectively.
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