Dr Toichi Takenaka, the first winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award in the inaugural Pharma Intelligence Awards Japan earlier this year, talks to Scrip about his journey from researcher to CEO and today as a mentor for Japanese bioventures. Starting his career in an “empty lab” in the 1960s motivated him to pursue a string of collaborations with universities in Japan and on to the discovery of four successful drugs.
For many struggling researchers-turned-CEOs of Japanese bioventures, 81-year-old Dr Toichi Takenaka has been a mentor to whom they can make a phone call for any advice.
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Japanese CDMO Bushu talks about a consortium designed to provide a broad range of development services to smaller foreign firms looking to bring high-need drugs to the Japanese market.
Japanese incubator Ciconia has just started verifying its first drug candidate with a vision of building domestic startups with globally competitive assets.
Although pharmaceuticals are exempt from the US reciprocal tariff policy, for now, the escalating global trade war is already posing practical on-the-ground problems for some companies, Scrip hears.
AstraZeneca logs growth in Japan despite a big reimbursement price cut for one of its top sellers and expects 40 approvals in the country over the next six years.
CSPC’s SYS6010, the first monospecific EGFR-targeting antibody-drug conjugate in the clinic for advanced NSCLC, has shown Phase I promise, but could face close competition with another China-originated bispecific.
Funding cuts at the National Institutes of Health, big pharma’s US onshoring moves, GCC partnerships and talks with the Indian government to solve intellectual property challenges are discussed in an interview with Aragen’s CEO, who is also keenly watching the Trump administration’s moves on pharma tariffs
Akeso explains the circumstances behind the release of preliminary overall survival data from a head-to-head Phase III trial with ivonescimab in lung cancer, which some investors viewed as disappointing.
