Medicines: Daiichi-Sankyo is betting on France to become a leader in the fight against cancer

Japanese pharmaceutical company number three, Daiichi-Sankyo, is experiencing its cultural revolution, the latter undergoing development in France. “Daiichi-Sankyo is a century-old pharmaceutical group, but for nearly a hundred years the group has been operating almost exclusively in Japan. We are at He developed the transformation, to go from a Japanese player to a global player.”

Although the group, 25^e A global pharmaceutical company with 16,000 employees and $9 billion in sales, established in 26 countries (and produced in six of them, including France), until recently, “a number of clinical trials and product marketing were limited to Japan,” Ken continues. Takeshita.

The challenge in the coming years is to bring its various country teams together to work together, through standardized procedures and organisation, to deploy a global strategy. This is coupled with another transformation, which began a few years ago, to change the major.

Pioneering oncology

Daiichi-Sankyo has traditionally focused on cardiovascular treatments. “They still make up the majority of our product range in Europe, but a shift is underway towards oncology, with a strong pipeline of products in development. We will be announcing significant clinical results this year,” declared the Director of Research and Development who, under the circumstances, “Our goal is to Being one of the world leaders in oncology by 2025 is a very realistic goal.”

France stands out worldwide for the strength of its academic research on cancer, with major players such as the Institut Gustave Rossi, Institut Curie and Lissa. Therefore, when it came to setting up a regional center for clinical trials in Europe, the group chose France, despite the fact that its European headquarters is located in Munich (Germany).

It has a research agreement with the Gustave-Roussy Institute and in Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine), “A research and development center was set up in May 2020, at the same headquarters of the French subsidiary. It already has 15 employees, they will increase to 20 by the end of the year ” , confirms Benoit Escoffier, former Sanofi, today General Manager of Daichii-Sankyo France.