Japan-based drugs company Takeda Pharmaceutical has this month rebranded its US-based corporate venturing group as part of a wider shift at the company to develop its global operations.
Graeme Martin, president of California-based Takeda Research Investment (TRI) since 2003, said the change to become Takeda Ventures "heralds a very clear statement that Takeda is a global pharmaceutical company".
TRI was formed in 2001 as Takeda’s first overseas intelligence hub for its research division that otherwise would have remained isolated geographically, culturally and by language from innovation in other markets.
Martin said the name change reflected a shift to use external corporate venturing as a "probe into new potential markets and therapeutic avenues that might extend the Takeda range" rather than simply to provide strategic intelligence and increase discovery capabilities in existing research areas.
The company has invested more than $30m in 13 portfolio companies, most recently in the US biotech NGM Biopharmaceuticals and Martin said Takeda Ventures would aim to back as many as four companies at their early to mid-stages of development each year. He said that consistent with the shift towards a more "corporate strategic" role for Takeda Ventures, the amount invested per round could increase to Y500m from Y300m and decision-making would be more streamlined, although the money would still come from the company’s balance sheet rather than a specific fund.
He added: "Some Western pharmaceutical companies have been pushing external venturing since the mid 1980s. Takeda is now taking its lead among its domestic competitors in admitting the need to introduce disruptive external concepts and ideas to help bridge an innovation gap and transform the singular cultural outlook of internal discovery into one with a more global perspective. Changing the way it does drug discovery so that it is not purely reliant on organic discovery is a significant step forward in Takeda’s global aspirations."
Last month, Takeda set up a global business development organisation at its US subsidiary led by Anna Protopapas in order to handle its mergers and acquisitions, product purchases, and in-and out-licensing of the research and development pipeline.
The move signaled the first signs of integration of Takeda’s $8bn purchase of anti-cancer drugs group Millennium and came just as the group bought the remaining 25% of China-based Tianjin Takeda Pharmaceuticals from its joint venture partner, Tianjin Lisheng Pharmaceutical.
Takeda also promoted Paul Chapman to general manager of its pharmaceutical research division, the first non-Japanese person to head its highly regarded product development pipeline.