Improving Development Pipeline through Strong In- and Out-Licensing Effort The Business Development & Licensing is responsible for activities involving licensing agreements (e.g. in-licensing of new candidate compounds). This unit works in close contact with OPUS and OPUK to improve our development pipeline through the in-licensing of late development stage compounds as well as early development stage compounds from European and the US drug companies and bio-pharmaceutical companies. As fewer new drug compounds with innovative mechanisms are becoming available internationally, our effort in acquiring early development stage candidate compounds has been stepped up. In 2006, Ono in-licensed a new drug candidate for cancer anorexia/cachexia from Sapphire Therapeutics, Inc. of the USA. In 2007, a short-active general anesthetic from CeNes Ltd of the UK (now Paion) was in-licensed and a therapeutic agent for thrombocytopenis was also in-licensed from Nissan Chemical Industries, Ltd.  In October 2008, Ono acquired from Progenics Pharmaceuticals, Inc. of the USA an exclusive license agreement under which to develop and commercialize methylnaltrexone bromide in Japan, a drug for the treatment of intractable constipation induced by narcotic analgesic.  All these successes in licensing partnerships contribute to the steady strengthening of Ono's development pipeline.