Academia’s contribution to drug discovery: current status and perspectives in Japan

Abstract

The international competitiveness of Japan in drug discovery is low. Among the companies responsible for discovering new drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 2017 to 2021, in the United States and Europe, bio-ventures established in the 1990s or later accounted for approximately half to one-third of the total. In contrast, all approved drugs originated by Japanese companies were discovered by long-established pharmaceutical companies. As seen in the bio-ventures that developed multiple new drugs during the same period and the research and development of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, an established drug discovery ecosystem exists in the United States and Europe to support the creation of innovative new drugs through the establishment of ventures by researchers based on promising technologies from academia, attracting substantial investments from investors and large corporations. Conversely, measures to promote university ventures have not been effective in Japan, and academic drug discovery, implemented as an alternative measure, has not yielded satisfactory results. From analyzing a domestic pharmaceutical company that has developed several FDA-approved drugs, it was found that promoting the alignment between modality technology development by pharmaceutical companies and novel drug targets discovered through academic biological research can be an effective strategy for advancing drug discovery in Japan. Based on these findings, this paper discusses perspectives for enhancing the competitiveness in drug discovery in Japan.