Astellas Pharma and Daiichi Sankyo have unveiled plans for a compound-library sharing partnership, the largest such pact to be formed in Japan.

The collaboration involves the exchange of some 400,000 selected compounds including a significant number of proprietary synthetic compounds from the companies' respective libraries. It will run for three years, starting on April 1.

Both Astellas and Daiichi Sankyo will be able to implement broad high throughput screening using the shared compounds "without restrictions on targeted disease areas". Each company will disclose "sufficient information" to allow the other to implement HTS independently.

The companies added that the collaboration "enables each party to promote innovative new medicine R&D".