TOKYO and Sendai, Miyagi, September 24, 2021 - Tohoku University (President; Hideo Ohno, “Tohoku University”) and Astellas Pharma Inc. (TSE: 4503, President and CEO: Kenji Yasukawa, Ph.D., “Astellas” ) have established the second phase of comprehensive industry-academia collaboration on July 30 to continuously create value for patients through co-creation of innovative healthcare solutions.
In the first phase (August 2018-July 2021), Tohoku University and Astellas set up the "TACT (Tohoku University and Astellas Collaboration Committee) Office" to serve as a hub function for interorganizational open innovation. Along with building a functional network necessary to promote large-scale industry-academia collaboration, both parties have been conducting joint research mainly in the fields of medicine, pharmacy, and biomedical engineering. In the second phase of this agreement, based on the built network foundation, both parties will promote interdisciplinary joint research that will organically connect Astellas’ drug discovery capabilities with Tohoku University's strengths in the medical, science, and engineering fields, and aim to create innovative healthcare solutions.
Tohoku University expects to incorporate Astellas' drug discovery capabilities for the purposes of promptly returning innovative research results to society and contributing to solving various problems, especially those in the healthcare field. In collaboration with Tohoku University, Astellas aims to realize novel healthcare solutions by obtaining early access to cutting-edge intellectual property and technology in a wide range of fields such as dentistry, science, and engineering, in addition to the fields of medicine, pharmacy, and biomedical engineering.
Based on this agreement, both parties will promote activities of collaborative creation between industry and academia to implement research results into society as value for patients.
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