Prof. Yoshiaki Tsukamoto, executive director of the Japan Bioindustry Association (JBA), talked exclusively to PharmaBoardroom at the BIO 2017 conference in San Diego on the role of his organization within Japan and his mission to instill a start-up culture within the Japanese biopharmaceutical industry. Japan is widely regarded as one of the most innovative countries in the world. In terms of the life sciences, Japan is strongest in basic research and Japanese scientists have been recognized for their groundbreaking contributions, with 25 Nobel Prize winners since 1949, 17 of which have come in the 21st century. However, bringing Japanese innovations to market has traditionally been a tricky prospect. As Prof. Tsukamoto highlights, 20 years ago when working at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and attempting to promote collaboration between academia and industry as well as technology transfer, “Japan was far away from open innovation and universities did not want to engage in technology transfer; they wanted their only focus to be on research.”

Prof. Yoshiaki Tsukamoto, executive director of the Japan Bioindustry Association (JBA), talked exclusively to PharmaBoardroom at the BIO 2017 conference in San Diego on the role of his organization within Japan and his mission to instill a start-up culture within the Japanese biopharmaceutical industry. Japan is widely regarded as one of the most innovative countries in the world. In terms of the life sciences, Japan is strongest in basic research and Japanese scientists have been recognized for their groundbreaking contributions, with 25 Nobel Prize winners since 1949, 17 of which have come in the 21st century. However, bringing Japanese innovations to market has traditionally been a tricky prospect. As Prof. Tsukamoto highlights, 20 years ago when working at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and attempting to promote collaboration between academia and industry as well as technology transfer, “Japan was far away from open innovation and universities did not want to engage in technology transfer; they wanted their only focus to be on research.”