Daiichi Sankyo Company has announced that it will restructure its subsidiary Asubio Pharma in April 2010 as a drug discovery venture business and be relocated in October 2010 to the site of the Kobe Medical Industry Development Project in Kobe.
In order to streamline the Daiichi Sankyo Group, the various rights and functions of Asubio Pharma will be restructured on April 1, 2010 and the manufacturing unit will be transferred to Daiichi Sankyo Propharma Co. The rights and functions to be restructured include intellectual property rights, late-stage clinical development, and pharmaceutical technology research.
Asubio Pharma will continue its core drug discovery function, which covers everything from discovery of new candidate compounds to early-stage clinical development. The company will continue to expand the development pipeline as a drug discovery venture within the Daiichi Sankyo Group. After this restructuring, Asubio Pharma expects to have approximately 200 employees.
With the April 2010 restructuring of Asubio Pharma, the three separate locations of its businesses around Japan will be consolidated, maintaining the discovery core function, from discovery research to early-stage clinical development, at the Kobe Medical Industry Development Project (KMIDP) site in Kobe. The site allows Asubio Pharma to utilize the external network to further promote drug discovery activities.
Daiichi Sankyo believes the KMIDP site is the optimum location for Asubio Pharma to continue its R&D activities.