March 30, 2007

CanBas Co., Ltd.
Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited

CanBas and Takeda to Sign the Collaboration Agreement for Investigational Compounds for Treatment of Cancer

Numazu and Osaka, Japan - March 30, 2007 --- CanBas Co., Ltd. (Numazu, Shizuoka, "CanBas") and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Osaka, "Takeda") today announced that both parties signed the collaboration agreement for investiga- tional compounds for treatment of cancer, CBP501 and its backup compounds discovered by CanBas. With this agreement, the world-wide exclusive right for development, manufacturing and marketing is granted to Takeda, while in the U.S. the development and promotion are jointly conducted by both parties.

CBP501 has a mechanism of action to selectively abrogate the G2 checkpoint, which is used by cancer cells to determine if a cell is progressing correctly through replication within the cell cycle. CBP501 is expected as a potential cancer treatment with lesser influence on normal cells, when being used as concomitant therapy with chemotherapy anti-cancer drugs which will lead to promoting the damages to DNA of cancer cells. Now CanBas is conducting phase 1 clinical study of this product in the U.S.

Under the agreement, CanBas will receive an initial payment upon the commencement of the collaboration. Takeda will also make an equity investment in CanBas. CanBas will receive milestone payments related to the successful clinical advancements and regulatory approvals, and also royalty payments on the sales of the product, while there is a profit-sharing scheme for the U.S. market where both parties co-develop and co-promote the product. For the rest part of the world, Takeda will cover all the development expenses except a part of research expenses for backup compounds of CBP501.

"We are very happy that Takeda highly evaluated our concept of G2 checkpoint abrogation and that we have reached this collaboration agreement on CBP501 and backup compounds", said Takumi Kawabe, M.D., Ph.D., President & CEO of CanBas. "We believe that we can improve the speed and quality of our clinical development here- after by this collaboration."

"We are very much pleased with this agreement with CanBas", said Yasuchika Hasegawa, President of Takeda. "We will fully cooperate with CanBas in clinical development and we expect that we can offer this treatment option to patients and health care providers as early as possible, which will contribute also to enhance our cancer franchise as one of our core therapeutic areas."

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Within a cell cycle there are two major checkpoints (G1 and G2) that are used by the cell to determine if the cell is progressing correctly through replication.
These checkpoints allow the cell to pause during replication and repair damaged DNA and to ensure that the cell is properly prepared to continue with cell division.
If the cell does not receive the correct signals to proceed through a checkpoint, a safety mechanism may be induced that causes cell death via apoptosis.
Research has shown that the G1 checkpoint is impaired in numerous cancers; this impairment increases the chance for the cell to replicate damaged DNA thereby inducing mutation. Generally, cancer cells accumulate multiple mutations in various G1 checkpoint genes most of which act to exacerbate cancer progression.

However, even cancer cells cannot survive without repairing severely damaged DNA.
So, cancer cells repair their damages in DNA by relying on the G2 checkpoint (which isn't extensively used by normal cells).
Cancer cells become even more dependent on a properly functioning G2 checkpoint when stressed by anti-cancer drugs, gamma irradiation or hyper-thermia.

Therefore, the disruption of G2 checkpoint can be used to target cancer cells specifically.

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About CanBas

CanBas was spun off of the research of three scientists from the Nagoya City Medical School and Fujita Health Medical School. These scientists founded CanBas as a drug development biotech with the help of angels and venture capitalists in 2000.
The company's core technologies include drugs that target the G2 checkpoint and a screening system to find selective abrogators of the G2 checkpoint. CanBas is also developing techniques to best determine the specific drug sensitivity of individual cancer from a patient, to increase the probability of prescribing a successful drug regime. Additional information is available through its corporate website,

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