Eisai Co., Ltd. announced that the company decided to strengthen and continue its venture investment business, which launched in 2019, with the aim of discovering innovative technologies and services, supporting venture businesses with such technologies and partnering with those businesses in the future, so as to accelerate drug discovery innovation and the establishment of the ecosystem platform.

This investment business supports venture businesses that are in line with Eisai’s goal of contributing to patients, and have cutting-edge drug discovery platforms likely to create synergies with Eisai’s research and development initiatives in its strategic focus areas of neurology, oncology, and global health, or innovative digital technologies and services which help facilitate the creation/operation of ecosystems based on Eisai’s collaboration with other industries. Over the five years since its inception in May 2019, the venture investment business has invested in more than 30 companies in a variety of fields, including new modalities and leading-edge biotechnologies, such as biologics, nucleic acids therapeutics, and gene therapy, as well as AI, data management/collection, smart devices, and digital therapeutics. As the innovative technologies and business insights gained through this investment business have been incorporated into Eisai’s corporate strategy, it has also contributed to the promotion of many collaborations and the creation synergies with our existing business. Additionally, the selling of shares from several investments has led to profit.

Eisai will strengthen this venture investment business through an increase in the annual investment limit from 3 billion to 4 billion yen. Moreover, Eisai will seek further improvement in strategic return, which is the core of this investment operation, through expanding the scope of cooperation across the entire group to undertake a wider range of collaborations. As an extension of its investment strategy, Eisai will make a certain degree of investment in technologies/services in drug discovery and digital fields where substantial innovations are likely to occur outside of our key strategic areas and ecosystem-related fields.

Eisai is committed to utilizing this venture investment business to accelerate flexible collaboration with academia, drug discovery ventures, and IT ventures, to create innovative new medicines targeting diseases with high unmet medical needs. As an hhceco company, Eisai aims to effectively achieve social good in the form of relieving anxiety over health and reducing health disparities by creating solutions through an ecosystem in collaboration with other industries.