This two year, collaborative agreement includes research funding from Takeda divided between Florida Hospital-TRI and Sanford-Burnham. For Takeda this collaboration represents one of the largest and most ambitious discovery research partnerships that it has conducted with the not-for-profit sector.

"We view this collaboration as an opportunity to further Takeda's goal of identifying targets for new therapeutics to treat obesity and its negative health consequences, including metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and heart disease." said Dr. Paul Chapman, General Manager, Head of Pharmaceutical Research Division of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited.

The partners expect that this research agreement will set the stage for future collaborative drug discovery campaigns aimed at novel therapeutics to treat obesity.

Obesity: An Epidemic According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, over one-third of Americans are overweight and another one-third is obese (cdc/obesity/). Obesity leads to numerous serious illnesses, including type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, gallstones, fatty liver disease, sleep apnea, heart failure, birth defects, miscarriages, asthma, and some forms of cancer. Obesity causes at least 112,000 excess deaths in the U.S. each year and reduces lifespan by up to eight years. Medical-related expenses attributable to obesity are projected to top $344 billion by 2018.

SOURCE Florida Hospital, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited