Eisai's research and development subsidiary KAN Research Institute, Inc., currently located within the Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster, has received official approval from the city of Kobe to take part in a special international strategic development project being implemented within the Kansai International Strategic Innovation Zone and has therefore decided to relocate to a new research facility within the Zone in order to strengthen its research capabilities and increase the scale of its research.

The new research facility has a total floor space of approximately 12,000m2, or roughly five times that of its current premises, with the capacity to house around 100 researchers, more than twice the present number. KRI plans to relocate to the new facility in 2014.

KRI is a research group that aims to discover and develop new drugs based on novel therapeutic concepts as one of the 12 units that comprise Eisai Product Creation Systems (EPCS). Specifically, the KRI is dedicated to conducting discovery research based on the concept of “Integrative Cell Biology for Medicine” in its three areas of therapeutic focus-refractory immune diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and cancer relapse and metastasis.

Located within the Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster since October 2006, KRI has proactively undertaken product creation activities in partnership with other EPCS units and academia, resulting in it being able to bring E6011, a first-in-class antibody discovered in-house for the potential treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), successfully into clinical development in fiscal 2012. Going forward, KRI will continue to pursue greater levels of scrum-style open innovation by working in close collaboration with doctors and researchers at universities, hospitals and other institutions as part of the strategic project, in turn creating new medicines to treat neurodegenerative diseases.

KRI remains committed to uncovering disease mechanisms and generating novel therapeutic concepts based on human biology by concentrating its research efforts on the cell, the smallest unit of life-namely, the characteristics of specific cell types and molecule localization that cause disease. In order to turn the knowledge it has accumulated thus far and bring its enhanced pipeline to market as soon as possible, KRI will strengthen its research capabilities in the field of cellular biology, including cellular and molecular imaging, cell-specific differentiation markers and differentiation induction, and genetically-modified animals. KRI will leverage the benefits of its new facility being located within the Kobe Biomedical Innovation Cluster, one of Japan’s largest bioclusters, and work in collaboration with outside doctors and researchers to undertake innovative product creation activities as it seeks to ensure the delivery of new medicines that further help to increase patient benefits.

The Japanese government, based on the country’s New Growth Strategy (approved by the Japanese Cabinet on June 18, 2010), established the Comprehensive Special Zone System to implement a comprehensive policy package that encompasses deregulation policies as well as policies aimed at providing taxation, fiscal, and financial support. This system serves to provide comprehensive support tailored to the characteristics of each region for wide-raging and strategic region-based initiatives designated and accredited under the Comprehensive Special Zone Act of Japan through a range of deregulation, taxation, fiscal, and financial support policies.