R&D Management of Japanese Drug Discovery Companies in the Era of Genomic Drug Discovery
Kazuhiro Asakawa (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business Administration, Keio University)
Atsuomi Obayashi (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business Administration, Keio University)
Hiroshi Nakamura (Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business Administration, Keio University
The Office of Pharmaceutical Industry Research Chief Researcher)
Yoshihiro Narita ( The Office of Pharmaceutical Industry Research Senior Researcher)
Yuki Kagayama ( The Office of Pharmaceutical Industry Research Former Senior Researcher)
Masato Suzuki ( The Office of Pharmaceutical Industry Research Former Senior Researcher)
Keiko Nakamura ( The Office of Pharmaceutical Industry Research Former Senior Researcher)
Hiroyuki Hirai ( The Office of Pharmaceutical Industry Research Former Senior Researcher)
(No.11: Published in September 2002)
Japan's drug discovery-based pharmaceutical companies are facing two major waves. The first wave is the transformation of drug discovery approaches with the advent of the genomic drug discovery era, and the second wave is the competition with increasingly large Western pharmaceutical companies. To analyze and discuss these two fundamental issues, we visited and interviewed nearly 100 companies, including not only major Japanese pharmaceutical companies, pharmaceutical-related venture companies, and universities, but also major European and US pharmaceutical companies, bio-venture companies, and universities. In addition, questionnaires were sent to R&D headquarters and research centers of major Japanese pharmaceutical companies and pharmaceutical-related venture companies to address the essential issues extracted from the interviews. Based on the data collected in this way, we examined the "strengths" and "weaknesses" of Japanese drug discovery-based pharmaceutical companies and their causes at the company level (within a company) and at the industry level (between companies) through comparison with European and U.S. companies, and discussed strategies for overcoming "weaknesses" by leveraging "strengths" at each level.