Reversed pitching from major Japanese pharma companies

This free webinar will give you a great occasion to learn directly from major Japanese pharma companies about collaboration opportunities. Webinar invitation comes from Business Sweden, Tokyo

Register here!

Japan is the third largest pharmaceutical market in the world. The market size was 11.8 trillion JPY (Approx.8.9 billion SEK) in FY 2019-20. The Government of Japan has promoted the healthcare industry as an important growth engine under the country’s economic revitalization and growth strategy since 2013. Major Japanese pharmaceutical companies spend between 15% and 25% of their revenue on research and development and are moving to further expand their global operations. To further strengthen their pipelines, they also invest in strategic alliances such as collaborative research and M&A with overseas companies, academia.

The webinar will be a great opportunity for Swedish life science companies and academia to learn about research priorities and collaboration structures of major Japanese Pharmaceutical companies directly from them.

Business Sweden’s Life Science in Tokyo team will also support with arrangement of one-on-one web meetings. After attending the webinar, please send your non-confidential materials to Business Sweden Tokyo at Etsuko.yasuda@business-sweden.se indicating the companies you wish to have a follow-up meeting with, and how your company fits their research priorities.  We will set up MS Teams meetings with those companies who agree to meet.

Signup: No cost, No later at 12:00 PM CET on 11th September 2023

Program & the key interest areas of the Japanese Pharma companies

8:00       Opening Remarks / Magnus Blondell, Life Science Lead East Asia Pacific, Business Sweden

8:05       Japanese companies’ presentations

• Kyouko Saita, Ph.D., Business Development, Astellas Pharma Inc.
• Yuichi Tominaga, Ph.D., Senior Director, Global Business Development, Daichi Sankyo Co., Ltd.
• Shinobu Mitsuda, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Sohyaku Innovative Research Division, Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation
• Hiroki Fujimoto, Associate Director, Business Development, Otsuka Parmaceutical Co., Ltd.
• Jun Hidaka, Vice President, Head of External Innovation, External Innovation Department (EXID), Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd.

8:50       Q&A

9:00       Closing

The key interest areas of five Japanese Pharma companies are:

Astellas Pharma Inc.

Astellas is interested in cutting-edge science/technology which is leveraged in drug discovery including new biological insights, platforms, and modalities across multiple therapeutic areas.

• Cell and gene therapy programs and technologies for regeneration of eye and other organs
• AAV gene therapy projects and technologies
• Programs and technologies to modulate mitochondria related pathway
• Novel immuno-oncology programs
• Targeted protein degradation programs and technologies
• New technologies and modalities for immune regulation, including immunoregulatory cell therapy
• Programs and Technologies in other emerging research areas including in vivo cell direct reprogramming, chronobiology, engineered phage therapy

Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd.

Daiichi Sankyo is interested in disruptive science in the preclinical phase and seeking early-stage technology platform-based opportunities for research collaboration with academia or startups.

Oncology

• Novel protein degradation technologies that are based on other than the ubiquitin-proteosome system
• Cutting-edge technologies that enable targeting “undruggable” epigenetics-related molecules
• Unique antibodies or binders (e.g. Fab, scFv) against tumor-associated antigens expressed on tumor, immune, or stromal cells that are applicable to antibody therapies and/or cell therapies

CNS

• Psychiatric diseases

• Novel target and psychiatric disease animal model induced by primary neuroinflammation. It is preferable there are biomarkers suitable to judge the therapeutic potential.
• Research for endogenous ligand, receptor, or pathway which is expected to be involved in abnormal activity of specific brain area causing psychiatric disease. Abnormal activity of specific brain areas reported in patients and reproducibility in rodent models is recommended.

• Neurodegenerative diseases

• Novel research on glial cell function which can reveal the relevance of the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Ideas with high originality regarding neuroinflammation, cellular metabolism, and senescence are of particular interest.
• Research for finding novel therapeutic targets utilizing clinical information regarding prognosis and/or data from clinical trials.

Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation

• Drug seeds realizing precision medicines for ALS, MELAS, MSA, PSP, FTD and ASD
• Drug seeds for targeted protein degradations or antibody drug conjugates for refractory cancers
• Clinical samples, cell models, and animal models for above diseases
• Targeted protein degradation technologies regarding tissue specific E3 ligase
• DDS or formulation that enable oral administration of middle-molecular weight compounds
• Biomarkers that can be implemented in clinical trials for above diseases (including by wearable devices)
• Methods to identify interactions between small molecules and intrinsically disordered proteins (IDP) which cannot be isolated and purified (NMR is out of our interest)

Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

Otsuka is focusing on Psychiatry, Neurology, Nephrology therapeutics and others including new MOAs, modalities and platform technologies for our future drug discovery.

• Evolutionary/Innovative Science with drug candidate screening/design/selection system
• Small molecules, inhibit protein-protein interaction or work as protein degrader
• mRNA therapeutics with distinct nucleotide technology
• Non-viral gene therapy system
• New and improve antibody/nucleotide delivery system (e.g. oral and high-volume SQ)
• Any novel modalities/molecules to reduce Amyloid beta oligomers or Synuclein fibrils
• Targeting DDS technology for renal and CNS diseases

Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd.

Sumitomo is exploring opportunities on early stage for Assets and Technologies in CNS and Oncology fields, and Platform Technologies.

• Psychiatry: Drug discovery based on neural circuit pathology
• Neurology: Drug discovery based on molecular pathophysiological mechanisms
• Oncology: Novel therapeutic targets or agents targeting context-dependent cancer vulnerabilities, Novel immunotherapies
• Platform Technologies: Drug discovery platform, Drug delivery system, Novel modality suitable for our focused areas