The Nordic companies arrives in Yokohama with different assets and aims, yet much of what they say about Japan overlaps. For NextCell Pharma, the trip is about finding partners for NXTCL-T1D, its allogeneic cell therapy in type 1 diabetes, and specifically companies that can contribute strategically and financially to its pivotal programme aimed at Japan and the wider Asian market, says CEO Mathias Svahn.
SynAct Pharma, which has late-stage assets in immunology, comes to advance its global and regional partnering talks in parallel, says Chief Business Officer Mads Bjerregaard.
– BioJapan is a great place to meet people from both global companies and regional players who think Asia Pacific first, he says.
Sprint Bioscience arrives with relationships already in place. The company has strong ties with Japanese companies and comes to deepen them and add new ones, says CEO Johan Emilsson, who calls BioJapan the most important event in Asia for building business relationships. Cellectricon, for its part, comes to turn scientific conversations into research collaborations. The company helps drug developers investigate disease mechanisms, evaluate compounds and assess neurotoxicity risk using advanced in vitro neuronal models, and at BioJapan it meets research teams working in CNS disorders, pain and oligonucleotide therapeutics.
On the back of out-licensing deals this year with Eli Lilly and Denmark’s QuantumCell, AlzeCure Pharma’s CEO Martin Jönsson comes to follow up dialogues with pharma, investors and vendors and to strengthen relationships. He makes the case that BioJapan reaches companies and senior people who don’t come to BIO International and BIO Europe.
– The Japanese companies are especially interested in early programs and the underlying science, which makes it a good and interesting market for a Swedish biotech, he says.
Deep science and clear priorities
Asked how Japanese partners engage with early- or late-stage science, Emilsson plays down the distinction.
– It is often more about having the right offering. These companies are generally very clear about what they are looking for, he says, adding that priorities can change over time, which makes it important to nurture the relationship.
Svahn makes a similar point, noting that Japanese companies tend to spend more time understanding the scientific and development detail before they move, and that Japan’s long experience in cell therapy and regenerative medicine makes it an attractive market for NXTCL-T1D. Jönsson draws the contrast more sharply. Japanese companies engage much earlier and take a greater interest in the science itself, he says, where US and European companies lean more on the available proof-of-concept data.
For SynAct, with assets further along, the conversation turns quickly to how a candidate would be developed for Japan and China inside a global phase III programme, where clarity on the regulatory path and market acceptance can look different than in Europe or the US. Mattias Karlsson, CEO of Cellectricon, comes back to the same basic questions wherever he is, whether the biology is convincing, whether the model is relevant, and whether the results can support a development decision.
– In our Japanese discussions, there is often considerable attention to validation, reproducibility and how an external partner will work with the internal research team, he says, though he is wary of drawing a simple regional divide.
Patience and consensus
The long-term nature of Japanese business runs through the companies’ accounts. Svahn, who has been coming to Japan since 2019, sees it as the starting point.
– Long-term relationships and trust really matter, so we invest in them over time and see repeated engagement as an important part of building a partnership, he says.
Emilsson says the long view is simply how Sprint already works.
– A culture of consensus often prevails, so decision-making can take time. But once a decision has been made, you know it has the full backing of the organisation, he says.
Jönsson reports much the same, with one added wrinkle. Japanese companies are more long-term and build on relationships and trust, he says, but they are also more hierarchical, which can slow the pace and takes patience to work upwards through an organisation. His own dealings with them have been very positive. Bjerregaard makes a related point from SynAct’s side. Deal execution in Japan can hinge on building clarity about the opportunity across more functional and managerial levels than a European company might expect. For Cellectricon, that long-term commitment means continuity on the ground. The company works with Biosector and its founder Stefan Sandström, who brings close to two decades with Japanese pharma, which helps Cellectricon reach the right research teams and move talk towards concrete projects.
The wider Asia picture
For most of the companies, Japan is one piece of a wider Asia picture rather than a market on its own. NextCell treats Japan and mainland China as very different markets that need separate approaches.
– We established NextCell Hong Kong as our gateway to Asia, providing a base for both the Hong Kong market and our expansion into mainland China. Japan remains a key market in its own right, while our China strategy is being developed in parallel, says Svahn.
SynAct is in talks with companies focused on Japan, China and South Korea, each with its own development requirements, and weighs them as candidates for a global phase III programme. Cellectricon sees room wherever a developer needs a deeper read on neuronal function or neurotoxicity, and uses BioJapan to test that fit with Chinese and other Asian companies. For AlzeCure, Asia also opens the door to regional deals that can make sense for regulatory reasons, and the Chinese companies Jönsson meets stand out.
– The science and deals many Chinese companies have produced in recent years are impressive, he says, adding that a slowly improving IP situation is making the market more attractive and bringing Chinese companies back to discussions they had once set aside.
For four of the five, the pattern is the same. The deal follows the relationship, not the other way around, whether the conversation starts with a cell therapy in diabetes or a neuronal assay for a CNS programme. As Emilsson notes, a decision that takes time to reach is also one that arrives with the whole organisation behind it. SynAct places the weight differently. For Bjerregaard, what moves a discussion in Japan, as anywhere, is less the relationship than the science itself, the novelty of melanocortin receptor agonism and the universal opportunity he sees in resomelagon.
