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After graduating from medical school, I had an opportunity to work as an intern in Silicon Valley in the US. There, I observed the dynamic ways that bioventures took the latest research findings and promptly brought them to market as viable products.

After my internship, I returned to Japan to work as a clinical doctor at Kyushu University. One of my patients with age-related macular degeneration had been suffering from worsening sight due to changes in the macula, which is the most sensitive part of the retina.

As was the case then, there is still no fundamental cure for this disease. One day, this patient asked me: “Doctor, will my eyes get better? I’d like to be able to see my grandchild, who was born five years ago.” When I heard this earnest wish, I acutely felt my own powerlessness. It was then that I vowed to develop effective treatments and universally deliver them to patients, and this vow became my prime motivation for establishing Healios.

Aqumen Biopharmaceuticals (now Aqumen KK) was my first foray into starting a company, so everything was new to me. Nonetheless, we were able to develop BBG250 (Brilliant Blue G-250), a surgical dye used to stain membranes in the back of the eye, with a development partner in the EU. After receiving EU approval, we brought the product to market, where it is now the de facto standard.
*BBG is supported by 63.1 percent of ophthalmologists worldwide (excluding those in the US) according to a survey by the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery.

However, unexpected drastic developments in the economic environment required changes in the company; at one point we had no choice but to severely downscale to a minimal number of personnel. We also had countless worries on the financial side. Thanks to the unfaltering support of our stakeholders, we were able to achieve results. This support allowed us to move forward while remaining true to our mission of developing effective treatments and delivering them to patients.

Establishing and running Aqumen taught me many things. Yet I still haven’t fulfilled my vow of delivering a comprehensive treatment for intractable diseases. The enormous possibility of new treatments using iPSC technology has provided me with a path toward the realization of that vow. Currently, we are moving toward the practical application of iPSC regenerative medicine products for effective treatment by coordinating and cooperating with various businesses and research institutes to create mechanisms that smoothly channel Japan’s superb technological abilities into meaningful products for patients.

Healios is proactively developing know-how for safe and efficient cell-culturing technologies and pharmaceutical manufacturing, and acquiring broad knowledge of transplantation therapy while advancing its research and development activities for iPSC regenerative medicine. We plan to make significant use of these skills in broad fields.

Healios is advancing research on an immuno-oncology treatment for solid tumors by using gene-edited NK cells (eNK cells) with enhanced killing abilities. And also Halios is advancing research on UDCs, which are next-generation iPS cells with a low risk of immune rejection regardless of HLA type created using gene-editing technology, aiming to establish a next generation technology platform to develop more efficient and safer regenerative medicine products.

Furthermore, we are working on the development of therapeutic medicines for ischemic stroke and ARDS in Japan using somatic stem cells.