Bushu Pharmaceuticals and Takeda have entered into a new partnership agreement under which Takeda will transfer a part of its Pharmaceutical Sciences/CMC business to Bushu. Bushu, as a strategic partner of Takeda, will deliver on process chemistry, formulation and analytical development, as well as development, manufacturing and associated work of clinical trial materials.

CMC stands for chemistry, manufacturing and controls, which is the research and development activities including the design of API or formulation and product quality, and the development of manufacture processes to put new drug candidates discovered through research onto the market.

“This strategic partnership is a critical part of Takeda’s R&D transformation which enables a more agile and flexible approach for the drug development and manufacturing by focusing resources and activities to better meet patient needs,” said Jim Morley, head of pharmaceutical sciences, Takeda. “Bushu has an excellent reputation in Japan for providing high quality contract manufacturing solutions. Within this unique collaboration, we believe Bushu will be an ideal partner for Takeda as we focus, deliver, and advance our current and future pipeline.”

“This partnership enable us to expand our scope of business services, transforming our business from a traditional contract manufacturing organization (CMO) model, which serves in the commercial manufacturing, drug product manufacturing and packaging for clinical trial materials, to a truly one-stop service provider which covers the full range of drug development,” said Jun Yokohama, representative director, president and chief executive officer, Bushu. “As a strategic partner that supports Takeda R&D, we will focus on enhancing technical capability, building robust business foundation to meet requirements from various customers. This partnership will be our important cornerstone of globalization.”

This partnership is a complementary relationship between Takeda and Bushu that aims to improve Takeda’s operating efficiencies and create a more agile organization while enabling Bushu to broaden the scope of its current service offerings and its global reach by leveraging the two companies’ combined operational expertise and a wide range of manufacturing capabilities.

In the second quarter of FY2017, Bushu will acquire a wholly owned subsidiary of Takeda, which will be established in the first quarter of FY2017. This subsidiary will encompass a part of Takeda’s Pharmaceutical Sciences business including approximately 200 Takeda employees and a significant part of its R&D manufacturing facilities in Juso Yodogawa-ku, Osaka, via an absorption-type company split.