Japan’s investor community is ramping up both inbound and outbound investment to create a cross-border fertile hub of innovation in Japan, investors said during a panel discussion at Bio Japan 2025 held in Yokohama Oct. 8 to 10.

Bio Japan 2025 was abuzz with the news that Japan has once again snagged the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, with Shimon Sakaguchi winning for his discovery of a subtype of CD4-expressing T cells that affect the immune response. Earlier today, Susumu Kitagawa snatched the second Nobel Prize for Japan, this time in chemistry. Both Nobel Prize winners were professors at Kyoto University.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. is exiting all work in cell therapies and will seek an external partner to advance the company’s research and clinic-ready cell therapy programs, the company said, noting that it is not currently running any clinical trials using cell therapy technology.

Kyorin Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. is licensing Hinge Bio Inc.’s multispecific antibody-based therapy HB-2198 in Japan for multiple autoimmune indications, starting with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. is exiting all work in cell therapies and will seek an external partner to advance the company’s research and clinic-ready cell therapy programs, the company said, noting that it is not currently running any clinical trials using cell therapy technology.

While the discussions and votes at the past two meetings of the U.S. CDC Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) have generated a lot of controversy and resulted in some states and medical groups issuing their own vaccine schedules, the truth is that the newly reconstituted committee’s recommendations to date are still in line with, or more generous in some instances than, global norms.

Kyorin Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. is licensing Hinge Bio Inc.’s multispecific antibody-based therapy HB-2198 in Japan for multiple autoimmune indications, starting with systemic lupus erythematosus.

Novo Nordisk A/S terminated its global licensing deal with Japan’s Heartseed Inc. for its allogeneic induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)-derived cardiomyocytes.

Rakuten Medical Inc. is advancing a pipeline of solid tumor therapeutics built on its Alluminox platform worldwide, having gained conditional early approval of ASP-1929, an Alluminox-derived photoimmunotherapy, in Japan in 2020.

Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency has traditionally been less than receptive to clinical data from other nations, but that aversion is slowly giving way. Ames Gross of Pacific Bridge Medical told BioWorld that a trial conducted in another nation with significant representation of those of Japanese ancestry can go a long way toward obviating the need for a trial conducted in Japan.