Kyoto University Innovation Capital Corporation ("Kyoto iCAP"), headquartered in Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, has made an investment in BTB Drug Discovery Research Center, Inc. ("BTB") (headquartered in Sakyo-ku, Kyoto; Teruo Sawada, President), a venture company utilizing research results. This investment is the first investment by the KYOTO-iCAP2 Fund.

Outline of this investment
BTB is a drug discovery venture established by Professor Masatoshi Hagiwara of the Department of Morphogenesis, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, and is developing ENDOPIN, a novel pain treatment, and RECTAS, a treatment for hereditary intractable diseases.
ENDOPIN is a non-opioid pain medication with an unprecedented mechanism of action that stimulates endogenous opioid secretion. In preclinical studies, Professor Hagiwara and his research group found that ENDOPIN has a strong pain suppression effect comparable to that of synthetic opioids, but does not cause gastrointestinal disturbances, dependence, or other side effects associated with synthetic opioids. This drug development project was also selected by the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) for its FY2020 "Creation of Innovative Infrastructure for Clinical Research and Development (CiCLE)" project, and will be carried out as a project commissioned by AMED. In recent years, the number of deaths due to overdose of opioid pain medication has rapidly increased, especially in the U.S., reaching 50,000, which has become a social problem known as the opioid crisis. This drug is expected not only to provide a new alternative to synthetic opioids for many people suffering from pain, but also to be a drug that can solve the pressing social issue of the opioid crisis.
RECTAS is a therapeutic agent for rare congenital diseases caused by splicing abnormalities. Professor Hagiwara and his research group focused on splicing mutations in congenital long QT syndrome type 1 ("LQT1"), an intractable arrhythmic disease that causes sudden death due to polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, and confirmed the efficacy of RECTAS, a splicing control compound they developed, in iPS cells and animal experiments. LQT is a rare disease with many fatal cases not only in adults but also in children, and is expected to provide a new treatment option for rare diseases with high unmet needs, which should be called "precision advanced medicine. The development project for LQT was also selected by the AMED for its FY2021 "Drug Discovery Support Promotion Project - Pre-designation Commercialization Support Project for Drugs for Orphan Diseases", and the research and development of LQT will be carried out under contract with the AMED.
BTB's ultimate mission is to become a social infrastructure to deliver new medicines to people suffering from rare diseases by efficiently and rapidly conducting early-stage R&D at the highest risk, based on the results of advanced basic research discovered in academia.
The company's R&D projects have so far been funded by the Kyoto University GAP Fund Program and Incubation Program. In addition, the company was founded with support from Kyoto iCAP even before its establishment.
Kyoto iCAP evaluated the high potential of BTB's two pipelines and entered into an investment agreement with BTB to underwrite a third-party allocation of new shares, resulting in a total investment of 100 million yen. In addition to the investment, Kyoto iCAP will dispatch one outside director to support the overall management of the company.

Outline of BTB Drug Discovery Research Center, Inc.

Establishment	June 2020
Business	Development of novel painkiller and splicing modulator for cancer immunotherapy
Head Office Location	Sakyo-ku, Kyoto
President & CEO	Teruo Sawada