International Session3:BioLabs JAPAN Liaison -The value that BioLabs brings to Japan-

[The value that BioLabs brings to Japan]

Abstract

In the 10 years of my researcher life in Cambridge City MA, I witnessed a great flourishment in the place where anyone would not have liked to enter at night. I mean the city had become the biotech capital expanding quickly and being safer and wealthier year by year. Around Cambridge City, BioLabs has been playing an important role in the life science ecosystem. So I hope to induce BioLabs in the near future because I believe it is a missing element in Japan in order to pass the baton of life science to the next generation.

Profile

Dr. Taruho Kuroda (Taru) is the senior director of LEO Science & Tech Hub Tokyo, an external innovation arm of a global pharmaceutical company, LEO Pharma. As a portfolio worker, he provides various business consulting and mentoring services in the life science and healthcare fields, and serves as the Japan Liaison for BioLabs. He also serves as the Program Champion for Venture Cafe Tokyo's Life Science Cluster Program and the Impact Partner for Fresco Capital.

He started his career as an academic scientist and performed his research at RIKEN, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Harvard Medical School, and Mie University Graduate School of Medicine. Throughout his academic career, he has been awarded prestigious fellowships from Human Frontier Science Program and others.

To foster a smooth transition of scientific discoveries into real-life innovations, he pivoted his career into the pharmaceutical industry. In 2014 he joined Bayer and served as Alliance Manager / Senior Scientist at Open Innovation Center Japan and had responsibility for oncology and precision medicine. In 2019, he moved to LEO Pharma and founded an external scouting function that spearheads innovations in medical dermatology.

Taru holds B.A. and Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Hokkaido University as well as a pharmacist license.