About FPR – Who We Are
Forerunner Pharma Research (FPR) is a joint venture founded in April 2005 by Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Chugai), Mitsui & Co., Ltd. (Mitsui), and the Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA). Earlier in 2002, the parties caused to form PharmaLogicals Research Pte. Ltd. (PLR) in Singapore, to pursue more effective approaches for antibody drug discovery by means of disease and gene analysis, pathophysiological studies and genome informatics.
With its own research base favorably located at the Komaba Open Laboratory of the University of Tokyo, FPR occupies an advantageous position in utilizing the latest findings of academic and other institutions. In addition, FPR is backed up with drug development technologies of Chugai, Mitsui's business development capability, and groundbreaking "in vivo" evaluation system based on CIEA's cutting edge technology to produce transgenic animal models for human diseases.
By capitalizing on all these resources and capabilities, FPR strives for discovering revolutionary new drugs that helps increase people's health and wellbeing.
About Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Chugai)
Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (TSE code 4519), a Roche Group company, is one of Japan's leading pharmaceutical companies specializing in prescription medicines. With strong R&D orientation, Chugai is highly rated by medical professionals for its biotechnology-based product line. Specifically, Chugai focuses on developing therapeutic antibodies and molecular targeting drugs in low-molecular form mainly for oncology and lifestyle-related diseases.
About Mitsui Co., Ltd. (Mitsui)
Mitsui & Co., Ltd. is developing various business areas to deliver higher quality medical health care services that truly respond to consumer demand in, health care, aging service, pharmaceuticals, and prevention, under the environmental changes surrounding medical health care-the continuing drop in birth rates and the aging of the population, shifts in health and disease structures, deregulation and revision of relevant laws.
As a one of our activities, Mitsui is working to create a new business model of commercializing the diagnostic technologies enabling early detection of specific cancers and diagnosis of metastases and recurrence risks, which were not possible with the traditional diagnosis or examinations.
About Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA)
Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA), since its foundation in 1952, has been engaged in developing disease analysis systems that help medical and bioscience researches. Systematized breeding of quality experimental animals, establishing an international "Monitoring Center" for monitoring the quality of those animals, producing transgenic animal models for human diseases and the new "in vivo" evaluation system based on the above mentioned technologies are some of CIEA's major accomplishments.
By developing super-immunodeficient mice, CIEA made it possible to transplant such hard-to-transplant cancers as prostate and lung cancers. This enabled researchers to analyze and evaluate cancer disease models, which is expected to make substantial contribution to further advancement of cancer research, as well as to diagnostics and drug discovery for cancer.
