Following the Cabinet Decision on the Second Supplementary Budget for FY2022 -Toward Strengthening Japan's Drug Discovery Venture Ecosystem
November 08, 2022
Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association
Chairman Yasushi Okada
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Cabinet for its decision today to approve the second supplementary budget for fiscal 2022, which provides 300 billion yen to strengthen support for drug discovery ventures and greatly expands the scope of this support.
In order for Japan to continue to be a nation that creates new drugs, it is essential to foster drug discovery ventures that can compete on a global scale. To this end, it is necessary to build a drug discovery ecosystem that provides sufficient funds and hands-on support to drug discovery ventures with promising seeds, refines these seeds, and leads pharmaceutical companies to commercialization of the seeds as an exit strategy.
The "Drug Discovery Venture Ecosystem Enhancement Project," which is part of the measures against infectious diseases, is a groundbreaking initiative, and the pharmaceutical industry has been requesting that the budget for this project be expanded to cover a variety of disease areas. We strongly welcome the fact that the proposed supplementary budget provides 300 billion yen, which is a significant increase over the 50 billion yen provided last year for measures against infectious diseases, and that it also expands the areas covered by the subsidy, which had been limited to infectious diseases, given the general difficulty in raising funds in the drug discovery field.
The pharmaceutical industry will not only contribute to the exit strategy to link innovation to social implementation, but also promote the creation of innovative new drugs from this project by collaborating with academia to create promising seeds and by supporting various stages of human resource development to support the value chain, including manufacturing and clinical development of investigational drugs, etc. By supporting various stages, such as collaboration with academia aiming for drug discovery, and fostering human resources to support the value chain, including manufacturing and clinical development of investigational drugs, we will create many successful cases and contribute greatly to building a vibrant drug discovery ecosystem.
The above