Following the Cabinet’s Approval of the Second Supplementary Budget Bill for Reiwa 4 —Toward Strengthening Japan’s Drug Discovery Venture Ecosystem—
November 8, 2022
Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association
Chairman Yasufumi Okada
We would like to express our sincere gratitude for the allocation of 300 billion yen to strengthen support for drug discovery ventures and the significant expansion of the scope of support in the Second Supplementary Budget Bill for Fiscal Year Reiwa 4, which was approved by the Cabinet today.
For Japan to remain a leading nation in new drug development, it is essential to foster drug discovery ventures that can compete on the global stage. To achieve this, we must build a drug discovery ecosystem that provides sufficient funding to drug discovery ventures with promising leads, offers hands-on support to refine those leads, and enables pharmaceutical companies to guide them toward commercialization as part of an exit strategy.
The “Project to Strengthen the Drug Discovery Venture Ecosystem,” implemented as part of measures to combat infectious diseases, is a groundbreaking initiative, and the pharmaceutical industry has long requested that the budget for this project be expanded and that it be implemented across various disease areas.We strongly welcome the fact that this supplementary budget proposal allocates 300 billion yen—significantly exceeding the 50 billion yen allocated last year for infectious disease countermeasures—and, recognizing the general difficulty in securing funding in the drug discovery field, expands the scope of eligible areas beyond infectious diseases.
The pharmaceutical industry not only contributes to exit strategies that translate innovation into societal implementation but also collaborates with academia to generate promising leads,and by fostering talent to support the value chain—including the manufacture of investigational drugs and clinical development—we will promote the creation of innovative new drugs through this initiative. By generating numerous success stories at various stages, we will make a significant contribution to building a vibrant drug discovery ecosystem.
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