COMPANY TO WATCH: Boston Strategics (Boston, US) to Produce Drug R&D for Providing Global Support for Japanese Companies – Alliance with a World Class Cancer Center
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Boston Strategics produces drug research and development process comprehensively for new drug candidates. Boston Strategics, a US company, was founded in April, 2012, by Keizo Koya, CEO, and Eita Kitayama, President, who both have a significant work experiences in Japanese and US pharmaceutical and chemical companies. Entering into an alliance last month with University of Texas’s MD Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC), a world leader in cancer treatment and oncology research, Boston Strategics will use this opportunity to provide global drug R&D support for Japanese companies.
Pharmaceutical companies have been evolving their drug R&D capability by adopting Open Innovation utilizing external alliances to fill their technology gaps. Boston Strategics employs a revolutionary business concept called “True” Open Innovation. “It is a potential risk to have a large internal organization to move products forward rapidly and successfully,” says President Kitayama.
Boston Strategics focuses on devising a development strategy with high probability of success by eliminating internal leniency or traditional practices. Boston Strategics collaborates well with investigators or institutes like MD Anderson, a leader in translational medicine (bedside to bench) , in conjunction with selected Contract Research Organizations (CRO) or Contract Manufacture Organizations (CMO), to meet the particular strategic need of the client and put it into practice.
The developmental lead comes from Boston Strategics, with an external R&D team of contractors and other external experts, working on behalf of the sponsor company. It is global expertise and experiences of Boston Strategics’ employees that makes such a business concept possible. Boston Strategics has seven employees, but only elite players with drug R&D experiences in large pharma and biotech, and strong connections with academic, regulatory, pharmaceutical entities, and CRO and CMO partners.
Boston Strategics focuses on the oncology area because the development scale is relatively small in comparison to other therapy areas, and with its focused, expert developers, “We can develop products for clients at 10-20% reduced cost,” says President Kitayama. “We also can provide new drug development with a minimal research and development (R&D) investment by optimizing R&D tax credit or grants in the US or Canada.”
In the Japanese market, Boston Strategics is focusing on companies with no development function in the US, including mid-size pharmaceutical companies or chemical companies with pharmaceutical divisions. Boston Strategics already has three clients including pharmaceutical or chemical companies and multiple programs going into clinical phase in the US next year. Alliance with MD Anderson and clinical studies led by the world class oncologists enables Boston Strategics to provide broader strategies. “We would like to conduct business development capitalizing on our strength that we can develop products more rapidly with less investment,” says President Kitayama.
Boston Strategics also looks for opportunities to in-license compounds for development that were deprioritized due to changes in economic climate or investment/development strategy. Large pharmaceutical companies have many such compounds and Boston Strategics plans to develop such compounds by applying its innovative development strategy.
<Company Profile>
Foundation: April 7th, 2012, with $20,000 in capital.
Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Employee: 7
Business Lineup: Provide a platform for drug R&D utilizing strategic outsourcing
[Original article in Japanese; translated by Strategia]