The Kærtor Foundation is seeking programs for the discovery and/or development of new therapeutic agents in collaboration with other agents. Programs in any area of disruptive and transformational research are welcome.

The candidate programs should be suitable for evaluation by the Kærtor methodology and have the potential for intellectual property sharing.

The research programs should be related to early drug discovery. Examples of the type of research that may be eligible for consideration by Kærtor:

• Target identification and validation.

• Assays of low molecular weight molecules to predict the efficacy and potential therapeutic use of the molecules.

• Design and synthesis of small molecules with affinity for certain targets.

• Development of miniaturized HTS assays.

• Design of screening cascades to identify preclinical candidates.

Regarding therapeutic areas, in the Expressions of Interest form, you will find a list (not exclusive) of pathologies in which we are interested.

The purpose of the call is to accelerate the process whereby new disruptive therapeutic mechanisms reach patients, by using industrial standards to evaluate the mechanisms at the incubation stage for their potential for clinical application.

All previous ownership remains with the group that first generated the research. IP ownership generated during execution of the program will be shared between the Kærtor Foundation and the group submitting the proposal according to an agreement reached between Kærtor and the group submitting the proposal. Janssen does not acquire any property. Its aim is feeding the process of generation novel transformational therapeutic mechanisms.

The Kærtor Foundation will govern the program by applying its own methodology for the preliminary analysis and prioritized classification of the Expressions of Interest received, based on the level of innovation and the stage of the development.

A pipeline of prioritized Expressions of Interest will be created on the basis of evaluations by three committees

• Scientific, led by the Kærtor Foundation.

• Intellectual property, led by Kærtor.

• Industrial, led by the pharmaceutical company Janssen, which will bring its experience in the field of drug discovery to select the Expressions of Interest showing the strongest potential to provide new medicines for patients. This committee includes Janssen and two other Johnson & Johnson group organizations: Discovery Sciences and Johnson & Johnson Innovation.

The Program Steering Committee will subsequently select expressions of interest for incubation.

Kærtor may also select other programs that do not form part of those chosen by the Program Steering Committee for independent incubation.

Although the call will remain open, the first evaluation of Expressions of interest will be done with those received until September 30, 2017.

For all Expressions of Interest presented, the status and processing conditions will be communicated to the principal investigators.

Janssen will co-fund some of the programs and will also follow-up and provide advice to those programs from the Joint Steering Committee. Janssen will have no IP rights on the selected programs but will have a right of first negotiation on the projects for a limited time at the end of the program.

For programs that are not selected by Janssen but which are of interest to the Kærtor Foundation, an agreement will be reached with the foundation for further development.

No, proposals are accepted from anywhere in the world. Science is an international endeavour. The progress of the project within this program will be coordinated and managed by the Kærtor foundation, which is based in Santiago de Compostela (Spain).

Governance in the reverse transfer of knowledge that consists of applying the Kærtor methodology: selecting and incubating biomedical science programs to de-risk the process of drug discovery.