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2017/10/07

"Entrepreneurship Venture Program" Takeda's new approach for R&D innovation

Sham Nikam, Vice President, Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.
Hiroshi Nagabukuro, Senior Director, Head EVP Operation, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Research, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd.

The pharmaceutical industry has become very dynamic. It is no longer enough for pharmaceutical companies to be engaged in research and development in a specific region alone; rather, they need to expand research efforts globally. Amid its ongoing efforts to become more innovative, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company has opened the Shonan Research Center to make it a place to foster world-level innovation.
We are considering building an ecosystem that promotes innovations and startups to make our pipeline more robust to ensure the sustainable supply of medicines that matter. It now costs ¥170 billion to develop a new medicine and, moreover, the success rate is low. This situation is abnormal. With the present limited investment capital, it is impossible to maintain the status quo. We need a new R&D model.
A new R&D model should be designed in a way that allows us to translate animal research to human tissue research, use advanced data analysis, and increase the success rate of clinical trials through cooperation between industry and academia. To do so, external innovations by startups play a vital role.
With focus on three therapeutic areas and vaccines, we have reorganized our R&D sites worldwide. We have spun out other therapeutic areas and have provided licenses to startups. Some projects have been growing successfully. What we have learned from these experiences is that development on a small scale is more likely to lead to success than that on a large scale.
The Entrepreneurship Venture Program (EVP) of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company takes a different approach from that used by SPARK to creating biotech startups. EVP supports Takeda's researchers in their efforts to become successful entrepreneurs based on their own experience and technology. EVP receives candidate proposals from researchers, and offers seed funds for three years to selected proposals to enable the researchers to start up a business at Shonan Research Center. Those awarded with the seed funding will then improve their business plan with the help of experts and be engaged in development to move on to the next stage. After one year of preparation, we received 31 applications for EVP, out of which 9 projects, including SEEDSUPPLY, were launched under the program. Shonan Research Center is aiming to become the hub of the ecosystem through EVP activities.

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[Speaker Profile]
Sham Nikam
Sham Nikam is the Vice-President, Head of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company Ltd., based in Shonan/Fujisawa, Japan. He is responsible for identifying entrepreneurship opportunities for Takeda employees through creative use of Takeda assets, capabilities and infrastructure.
Prior to Takeda, he was the Head of Global Discovery at Nycomed in Germany. He also served as the CSO of Mumbai, India site with responsibilities that included for scientific strategy and interactions of Nycomed with Indian academia and pharma industry.
Sham's significant pharma R&D experience also includes more than 20 years in increasing leadership roles at Parke-Davis/Pfizer in Ann Arbor, and another 8 years at Smith Kline and French Labs and Sandoz. He delivered several clinical candidates for different indications and managed a portfolio of more than 15 discovery projects. He also has over 35 patents, peer reviewed journal articles, reviews and more to his credit.
Hiroshi Nagabukuro
Hiroshi Nagabukuro is currently a senior director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship, where he is heading Entrepreneurship Venture Program operation, which supports creating multiple spin-out startups. Hiroshi has a strong passion to create life science ecosystem in Japan/Asia. He also serves as a visiting fellow at Yokohama City University, School of Medicine.
He has strong background in pharmacology with >twenty years' experience in drug discovery for multiple therapeutic areas including 15 years at Takeda and 5 years at Merck Research laboratories. During his tenure at both Takeda and Merck, he brought a number of preclinical candidate compounds into first in human through proof of concept trials. He is an author of >20 peer reviewed journal articles and 8 patents.
Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. website: https://www.takeda.com/

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