A comprehensive portal site for Medical Innovation Support Office (MEDISO).Medical Innovation Support Office

Masakazu Masujima

Partner, Mori Hamada & Matsumoto

Masa is a guru of startup legal advisory space in Japan. Based on the experiences at Palo Alto office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, his advice is West Coast style; progressive, risk-base and proactive. Through more than 2 dacades of dedication to the startup space, he has advised IPOs, M&As and major cross-border fundraising for may startups, including biotech and healthcare ones, and have also worked with entrepreneurs through a variety of touch situation, such as disputes between founders, problems with investors as well as intellectual property disputes. Masa has served as a council member of numerous Government committees, such as Regulatory Reform Promotion Council, the Regulatory Sandbox Committee, the Digital Market Competition Council and the Industrial Structure Council. He is admitted to NY bar and Japan bar, and a licensed patent attorny in Japan.

Kenji Harada

Director & Chief Venture Capitalist, Medical Incubator Japan K.K

He graduated with a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the University of Tokyo, and is an immunologist by training. He is also a licensed pharmacist and a licensed first-class radiation supervisor. After obtaining his doctorate, he performed a wide range of tasks from basic research to preclinical research as a team leader at Toray Basic Research Laboratories (currently Pharmaceutical Research Laboratories), during which he was developing anti-inflammatory and central nervous system drugs. Subsequently, he was involved in planning and promoting collaborative research with universities and making assessments of platform technologies and drug candidates of American and European biotech startup companies from the technological and intellectual aspects. Furthermore, he conducted GMP inspections in pharmaceutical products and medical device areas multiple times. After starting his career as a venture capitalist, he consistently invested in the biotech sector in the U.S. and Japan. He served as a board member in some of the investees of the U.S. and Japan. Since August 2020, He has expanded his investments into European countries at his current company. He is also engaged in several Japanese governmental projects supporting Japanese startups and research projects.

Nobutaka Tani

Chair Person, Nonprofit Organization Japan Organoid Repository
Independent Consultant (New Business in Life Sciences)

He graduated with a master’s degree from the Department of Synthetic Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo. He led the research and development and the launching new project for medical devices, including blood purification system and brain and heart catheters, at Kaneka Corporation. After that, he was involved in RD of the whole life science, including biopharmaceuticals, as the head of the Life Science RD Center, while investing in medical venture companies such as DDS and establishing joint ventures. He then moved to JSR Corporation and established JSR Life Sciences. He led the launch of the life science project for M&A as the first president since JSR Life Sciences was established. As a part of open innovation, he established a CVC and invested in or acquired venture companies in Japan and overseas, while successively holding the positions of president of the invested companies.

Takeshi komatani

Takeshi S Komatani is currently principal litigation certified patent attorney in the field of chemical/pharma and bio/life sciences at a patent law firm, and has a number of counsels, including in academia, start-ups and big pharma internationally. Takeshi received his PhD from the University of Tokyo, Japan, received his LLB and LLM (global legal practice) from Keio University, and is currently a visiting professor at Kobe University, teaching IP strategy in entrepreneurship and Doshisha University (Kyoto). He has completed CEIPI Summer School on IP (University of Strasbourg), France. He is also qualified as a pharmacist with a certificate of Kampo and natural medicines specialist qualification. He was a researcher at F Hoffmann-La Roche in Basle, Switzerland. He has completed the EU-recognised PharmaTrain course at Osaka University, and is qualified as a board-certified member of the Japanese Association of Pharmaceutical Medicine. He is a member of the AIPPI and vice chair of TRIPS SC and a member of IP-GRTK SC and Pharma SC, and a member of the editorial board of the Pharmaceutical Patent Analyst (UK). He is also a member of JPAA, APAA, IPAJ, PSA, JPA, CSAIP and AAAS. He has lectured in academia, including at Japanese and German universities and WIPO Academy, and contributed to a number of articles.

Masato Kishida

My global achivements are categorized in two main types as follows: 1. Succesfully cordinating and facilitating several business globalization projects of some orphan products for CNS disorders and inherited metabolic disorders as a project leader, and 2. Outstanding success in the legal entities' establishment of three key area, e.g., a global clinical development head office in EU, two clinical and RA offices in the US & Brazil and an ASEAN region business head office in Singapore. Global business expansion is composed of two main phase. First one is to elaborate specific business plan from global business policy to clinical development strategy to draw the master of global business big picture. Next one is to implement the fixed road map and steamlined action plans on the timeline basis under the frequent risk assessment and business environment analysis.