Japan is a potentially rich source of new drug development candidates for both large and small companies, including bio-ventures. However, there is a significant gap between the needs of large pharmaceutical companies that are willing to in-license late-stage candidates, and academia, which has valuable research-proven concepts but no actual products. As a result, potentially valuable therapeutic opportunities may never reach fruition.
UMN Pharma was established in order to fill this gap. Our employees have extensive experience and expertise in research and development in pharmaceutical industry, enabling us to pursue internal product development until an appropriate value-added point for external partnering.

1) Pipeline:
We currently have four projects under development – three of them will be in the clinical stage in 2007. We also have access to a wide variety of in-licensing opportunities throughout Japan and abroad.

2) Experience and expertise:
Our top management and board of directors encompass more than 20 years of experience on average in the Japanese and international pharmaceutical industries, including firms such as Eisai, Santen, Astellas, Pfizer, Kyowa Hakko, Roche (Chugai) and Novartis. We have been involved in the registration of more than 10 drugs, including teprenone (Selbex; Eisai), rabeprozole sodium (Pariet; Eisai), valsartan (Diovan; Novartis), chimeric anti-TNFa antibody (Remicade; Centocor/Tanabe), oseltamivir (Tamiflu; Roche) and sildenafil citrate (Viagra; Pfizer). Our knowledge and experience span not only preclinical (GLP) and clinical (GCP) drug development, regulatory affairs, QA/QC, manufacturing (GMP), and the management of external resources such as CROs, but also licensing and business development, and intellectual properties.

3) Network:
Using our extensive network that spans the pharmaceutical industry, academia and the investment community, we can quickly identify in-licensing opportunities; track overall drug discovery, drug development, regulatory, and sales & marketing trends in the larger industry; and target potential partners for future out-licensing of our products.