• Axcelead gains access to Proteros’ capabilities in structural biology including Cryo-EM for Japanese clients.
• Proteros gains access to Axcelead’s capabilities in diverse and complementary assays and compound libraries for European and US clients.

Martinsried, Germany and Fujisawa, Japan – March 16, 2026 –Proteros biostructures GmbH (“Proteros”) and Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners, Inc. (“Axcelead DDP”) announce the launch of a collaboration that leverages complementary capabilities and expertise to offer a more comprehensive integrated support to each party's respective partners.

Under this collaboration, Axcelead DDP will leverage Proteros’s industry leading capabilities in Cryo-EM and structural biology to support Axcelead DDP’s partners within the Japanese market and Proteros will leverage Axcelead DDP’s assay capabilities including ion channels and transporters, and compound libraries for its partners from European and US.

Proteros brings industry leading expertise in structure-based drug discovery, including X-ray crystallography, Cryo-EM, and biophysics, to generate critical structural insights and work with our partners to accelerate programs from target into lead optimization. These capabilities enable a precise understanding of protein–ligand interactions and accelerate the identification and optimization of high-quality drug candidates.

Axcelead DDP leverages broad capabilities in assay development and execution to support hit identification and compound profiling from target discovery to IND filing. Axcelead DDP’s proprietary pharma‑derived libraries of more than 1.2 million compounds, including a substantial collection of non‑commercial molecules, provides access to broad chemical diversity, which enables highly efficient hit discovery across a wide range of targets.

Through this alliance, experienced scientists from both Proteros and Axcelead DDP will work together to deliver tailored, efficient and data-driven discovery programs for clients. The alliance aims to accelerate drug discovery by providing greater breadth of expertise, enhancing efficiency and reducing development timelines, particularly by combining Proteros’s structure gallery of over 200 validated targets with Axcelead DDP legacy database of more than 1,000 pharma-derived drug discovery projects.

“We are excited to support Axcelead DDP as their strategic partner in Cryo-EM and structural biology in Japan. As Proteros expands our capabilities internally we will also look externally for complementary capabilities with high-quality partners such as Axcelead DDP. Axcelead offers complementary capabilities and compound libraries as additional solutions for our partners” said Ryan Brady, Chief Business Officer, Proteros biostructures GmbH. “This collaboration brings together Proteros’ strength in enabling structure-based drug discovery with Axcelead DDP’s partner network, creating a powerful framework to accelerate innovation in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry in Japan.”

“We are delighted to collaborate with Proteros, which has a strong presence in the US and Europe, in the field of drug discovery services,” said Kengo Okada, PhD., Representative Director and CEO of Axcelead DDP. “By combining the complementary strengths and insights in drug discovery of both companies, we believe we can accelerate drug discovery research on challenging targets, including so-called undruggable targets. Through our support of diverse drug discovery players, we remain committed to contributing to the creation of breakthrough new medicines.”

About Proteros biostructures GmbH

Proteros is a privately held company with expertise in structure-based drug discovery powered by a cutting-edge discovery engine tailored to unlock even the most technically challenging disease-relevant drug targets. The company provides small molecule drug discovery services and its comprehensive enabling technology platforms, coupled with roots to Nobel Prize winning science and the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, have enabled prominent contributions to several lead optimization programs and clinical-stage compounds.

Proteros’ scientific rigor can accelerate overall research timelines for clients by solving the “High-hanging-fruits” of the early drug discovery and development stages and the company is consistently seen as the go-to partner for Hit to Lead Generation services. Proteros supports many of the world’s top 20 largest pharmaceutical companies and more than 200 pharmaceutical and biotech partners in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

For more information, please visit www.proteros.com.

About Axcelead Drug Discovery Partners, Inc.

Axcelead DDP is Japan’s first drug discovery solutions provider, established in July 2017 after inheriting the drug discovery platform from Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited. We provide comprehensive drug discovery services through a fully integrated research platform that consolidates all essential functions and infrastructure—including a large-scale compound library, screening, chemistry, pharmacology/biology, DMPK and safety—under one roof. Furthermore, by combining our extensive experience and expertise with a proprietary AI platform, we can rapidly generate high-quality, novel drug candidate compounds. This integrated setup enables us to deliver efficient and flexible one-stop solutions through a seamless framework, tailored to meet diverse needs in drug discovery from target identification to bridging into clinical development.

For more information, please visit https://axcelead-us.com/