Sunesis Pharmaceuticals Inc. entered a research collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development LLC to discover small-molecule enzyme inhibitors for inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

“Sunesis will apply its proprietary technology to finding lead compounds and development candidates for J&J, which obviously has the preclinical machinery and preclinical expertise to take those forward,” Sunesis Chief Financial Officer and Chief Business Officer Dan Swisher said.

Sunesis, of South San Francisco, will receive undisclosed up-front payments and research funding. The deal also includes potential research and development milestones and royalties on any sales. J&J gains an exclusive, worldwide license to any resulting products.

“It’s got all the normal elements of a true discovery-based collaboration,” Swisher said. “It’s not a library deal.”

The agreement with the J&J unit, of La Jolla, Calif., represents Sunesis’ first major U.S. collaboration, he said.

“As part of our business strategy, it is important that we partner selectively,” Swisher said, explaining that he expects this to be one of several Sunesis collaborations to be announced.

In October, privately held Sunesis entered its first collaboration, with Parma, Italy-based Chiesi Farmaceutici SpA, to discover and develop small molecules that inhibit a well-validated protein-protein target involved in immunological diseases. That deal could be worth $22 million to $30 million or more, excluding royalties, depending on the number of indications and compounds. (See BioWorld Today, Oct. 11, 2001.)

Initially, the work with J&J will be done at Sunesis using its Target Directed Lead Discovery technology platform. The technology is different than traditional high-throughput library screening in that Sunesis first screens small drug fragments, which provide information-rich starting points for medicinal chemistry, unlike random hits from a high-throughput screen. Sunesis said its approach reduces the number of compounds that must be tested.

The work with J&J will focus on enzyme targets and protein-protein interfaces, Swisher said.

“We have a very powerful lead discovery platform that can generate a lot of leads against variable and intractable targets,” he said.

In addition to the work Sunesis is doing within collaborations, Swisher said the company also has “several advanced programs” in late-stage preclinical studies that it is developing internally in the area of inflammation.

Sunesis raised $60 million in a private financing in July 2000 and $25 million in December 1999. (See BioWorld Today, July 13, 2000, and Dec. 6, 1999.)