January 22, 2024

To Whom It May Concern

KYORIN and Veneno Technologies conclude Joint Research Agreementfor Functional DRPs
KYORIN Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Head office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, President & CEO: Yutaka Ogihara,hereafter “KYORIN”) and Veneno Technologies Co. Ltd. (Head office: Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki, President:
Kazunori Yoshikawa, hereafter “Veneno”) today announced that they have entered into a joint researchagreement.
Under the terms of the joint research agreement, both parties will implement a program to obtain functional
Disulfide-Rich Peptides (DRPs) for their selected target membrane proteins by using Veneno’s nextgeneration peptide discovery technology called “PERISS”.
KYORIN aims to create high-value new drugs that meet medical needs under its long-term vision “Vision110”. KYORIN will achieve continuous new drug creation through the active use of open innovation.
Veneno Technologies, as a leading bio-active DRP discovery platform company, will continue to support
bio-active

DRP discovery research companies in the pharmaceutical field and promote a wide range ofdevelopments in the agro-science and materials fields based on this technology.

[Contact]
KYORIN Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.
Corporate Planning
Tel: 03-3525-4707
Veneno Technologies Co. Ltd.
E-mail: info@veneno.jp

[Reference]
1. About KYORINKYORIN aims to become a company that contributes broadly to people’s health by pursuing innovation in
drug discovery to strengthen drug discovery capability to create high-value new drugs that meet medial
needs, accelerating its evaluation and acquisition of in-licensed products and establishing a presence indesignated fields.
Trade Name:

KYORIN Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

Location:6, Kanda Surugadai 4-chome, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

Foundation:December 1923

President & CEO: Yutaka Ogihara
URL：https://www.kyorin-pharm.co.jp/
2. About Veneno
Veneno is a deep-tech company developing functional DRPs for use in the pharmaceutical, agrochemical,and biomaterial fields. Veneno’s technological competitiveness and business concept have been highlyevaluated, and AIST Solutions, a subsidiary of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science andTechnology (AIST), has recognized Veneno as an AISol Startup and provided it with various kinds ofsupport.
Trade Name:

Veneno Technologies, Co. Ltd.

Location:

2-1-6 Sengen, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki

Establishment: July 2020
President:Kazunori Yoshikawa

URL：https://veneno.jp/
3．Disulfide-rich peptide (DRP)
DRPs are a general term for peptides with multiple disulfide bonds in the molecule, usually consisting of
20 to 80 amino acids. The rigid framework created by the multiple disulfide bonds makes DRPs resistantto degradative enzymes and highly thermally stable. It is also known to have low immunogenicity due toits compact and stable structure. These properties make DRP a useful lead molecule for bio-active peptide
discovery.
4. PERISS method, a next-generation peptide discovery technology
The PERISS method is a high-throughput screening technology based on evolutionary molecularengineering that enables the discovery of DRPs acting on membrane proteins. By co-expressing a drug
target membrane protein and DRP in E. coli, a plasmid encoding the DRP bound to the target membraneprotein is recovered, and DNA sequence analysis is performed to identify the amino acid sequence. Thismethod is advantageous because it can target membrane proteins such as ion channels, GPCRs, andtransporters, which have so far been considered challenging to discover drugs by other evolutionary
molecular engineering methods such as mRNA display and phage display. Another significant advantage
is the ability to search for target membrane protein-binding DRPs in a very short period of time from ahuge size library, which is an order of magnitude larger than the conventional high-throughput screening
from chemical libraries.