R&D Organizations

Global Research & Development System

Global Research

Takeda has research functions in Japan, the U.S., UK., and in Singapore. The global research infrastructures surely represents its initiatives for pursuing the world's highest standard of productivity and will support enhancement of its R&D pipeline as source for future growth.

At the Tsukuba laboratories, researchers discover the seeds of innovative pharmaceuticals, the first step in the creation of new drugs. They focus on genetic information as well as research on cell receptors and enzymes that are integrally related to the causes of disease. The center conducts research into orphan receptors and bioactive peptides, discovering seeds for various receptor antagonists and agonists. It is also engaged in cutting-edge research areas such as identification of disease-related genes, computer-based combinatorial chemistry, and drug design.

The laboratories in Osaka focus on Takeda's core therapeutic areas. The center creates, evaluates and screens massive numbers of new compounds and selects new drug candidate compounds from among these. It then tests these candidate compounds for efficacy, safety, pharmacokinetics, and metabolism.

Our Approach toward the "Drug for Cancer Treatment" in the Global Research Bases

In terms of research in the area of oncology diseases, Takeda San Diego, Inc. (TSD), Takeda San Francisco, Inc. (TSF), Tsukuba Research Center and Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. in the U.S. will play the central role of the research.
TSD, with its world-leading high-throughput protein crystallography technology, has an edge in drug discovery research involving low-molecular compounds and will be engaged in creating new candidate compounds, centering on targets for the oncology diseases area. TSF, which was established in 2007, plays the role as a core research base for antibody drugs.
In addition to the low-molecular compounds, including advanced medicinal research which helps differentiate ourselves from our competitors, and hormone related drugs, which is our strongest area as well as peptide drug research, The Tsukuba Research Center will continue to focus on research into next-generation pharmaceutical products, such as nucleic acid drugs, in order to pave the new way for the drug discovery target, which is difficult to achieve via the aforementioned research themes.
Furthermore, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. will promote drug discovery research focused on protein homeostasis, developed by a multiple myeloma drug called VELCADE (generic name: bortezomib). In addition, as for infrastructure technology, their accumulated technologies in terms of genomics, proteomics and bioimaging, we will bridge such technologies to formulate more innovative pipelines in the area of oncology diseases by combining technologies which have been developed by Takeda.

Global Development

To speedily deliver superior pharmaceutical products to people around the world, Takeda is building a clinical development network centered in Japan, the United States, Europe and Singapore. Takeda has been accelerating the development of "nextgeneration core products" by integrated operations for clinical trials and an improved structure toward the submission for marketing and manufacturing authorization, under the close collaboration among Takeda Global Research & Development Center Inc., Ltd. (TGRD) in the U.S. and Europe, Takeda Clinical Research Singapore Pte Limited which is responsible for clinical development in the Asia-Oceania region and the headquarters in Japan.

(See Clinical Study Protocol Summaries for details.)
(See Clinical Study Report Summaries for details.)

Transitioning Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Takeda Bio Development Center Limited (Takeda Bio) into members of the Takeda group, our potential for the development of the "oncology diseases area" has been significantly increased. Millennium pursues the pipelines of the areas of oncology diseases and inflammation diseases to further advance to the next stage as well as maximizing products' value; utilizing their accomplishment of having implemented large-scale in-house phase 3 clinical trials.