Let's Talk about .. Drug Development and Innovations

On August 1st, 2012, I joined the open seminar organized by Global Health Leadership Program (GHLP), the University of Tokyo. 

The speaker is Dr. Ryo Kubota, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman, President & CEO of Acucela, Inc. The title of seminar is Drug development and innovations driven by bio ventures in the United States.

He described about how to introduce new molecule to the market and innovate as new drug.

FDA or U.S. Food and Drug Administration is the institute that has knowledge of all drugs from overall companies even confidential information, so it is good that all the drug companies let FDA checks the new products or experimental results before coming our to the market.

Process from discover to commercialization

When is the best time to start the drug company? Development phase should be the best time since we have done some amount of experiment until the risk already reduced. However, for him, he started since the beginning period.

There is difference between in Japan and US since Japanese people require quite high level of safety.

The cost of new drugs

The cost of new drugs increase every year. Currently, 2.7 Billion US Dollar is the fundamental cost to create one new drug development. It is capital intensive industry.

Current US health care costs exceed 17% GDP, while Japan is 8.5% GDP (That’s why we cannot see many new drugs come in Japanese market). However, the life expectation is better, so it means other factors that result this outcome in Japan is better than US.

Deep pile

The idea of deep pile shows that in case the drug company failed from one molecule, the company still can operate with other parallel molecule research.

Acucela

"The more diversity you are, the more idea you have", Dr. Kobuta explained that he tries to have multi nationality employees in his company because he believes that when we have any problems, people from difference places have different idea to solve the problem.

Drug development and innovations driven by bio ventures in the United States

Let's Talk about .. Santory Beer Factory Tour

On 26 July, 2010, I have a chance to join Senoo Lab's fieldwork. We went to Santory Beer Factory in Tokyo (サントリー武蔵野ビール工場). It's located at 3-1 Fuchu, Tokyo.

The nearest train station to the factory is Bubaigawara Station (分倍河原駅). There is a shuttle bus provided to go from the station to the factory. For 

Taxi, it's around 710 Yen.
It is considered the old company of food and beverage in Japan.

After gathering, the staff showed us the video about the process of beer production and then we walked around the factory following her.

The step of beer production (from the Brewery tour)

1. Ingredient

Suntory uses the following main ingredients:
-First natural water from underground.

-Second malt. It's a cereal grain.

 Suntory has a gold large field of malt because it's the main ingredient of Beer. They let us test t

he taste of malt. It's delicious.

-Third hop. A type of flowers.

 Its smell is like aroma. The staff let us try to smell both scene of them to compare, but for me, I think it's quite similar.
They become premium beer of suntory, with many medals show their nice of taste.

At the entrance there is air blower to blow small dust.

2. Wort production

The temperature is quite hot, around 35.6 c degree.
Unfortunely, we saw only the machine during it's not processing.

3. Fermentation

This process transforms wort into young beer.

It breakdown sugar in wort into alcohol and co2, and young beer is produced.

4. Maturation

They keep young beer at regular temperature 0 c degree.
We walk pass model show inside of the beer tank.

5. Distrillation

6. Canning

They have the red line limit to show the criteria of the length of border of the beer can. They evaluates by computer one by one. They also concern about environment issue , for example, separating of each type of garbage.

Finally I tried the premium malt's beer.

Other than beer, sanitary also provides natchan, an orange juice, and appetizer to eat with beer such as nuts, or rice crackers.

Nat Chan

More info. http://www.suntory.co.jp/factory/musashino/index.html