Message from the President

Our corporate philosophy is “to create a culture of health with live science^*.” All of us at Toyama Chemical share this goal and strive towards creating a company that will apply the accumulated fruits of our R&D efforts to enable people to enjoy lives brimming with vitality.

* “Live science” is a phrase created to express Toyama Chemical's philosophy that its activities are based not only on research activities in “life science” but also on its aim to offer, first and foremost, a healthy and lively lifestyle to all and to thereby enable everyone to lead a lively working life.

The Japanese pharmaceutical industry is facing a difficult operating environment. While recent the declining birthrate and demographic aging society, government efforts to promote the drug prices revision, the use of generic drugs and expansion of medical care inclusion by spread of DPC (Diagnosis Procedure Combination) for the restraint of medical cost which will continue increasing in future. Moreover, the difference of the scale of R&D cost with overseas company is in an enlarged tendency and after 2000 there is a little Japanese origin blockbuster drug. Therefore, it is the present conditions that the competition in the international market of the industry does not lengthen.

In this situation, we agreed on a strategic capital and business alliance with FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation and Taisho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. on February 13, 2008.

The strategic capital and business alliance aims to enable us, which has a strong pipeline in new drugs such as “anti-influenza virus agent (T-705)” and “agent for the treatment of Alzheimer disease (T-817MA)”, and which excels in the creation of new drugs, to make leaps forward as a leading world-class manufacturer of pharmaceuticals for specified disease area (such as anti-infective agents, CNS and cardiovascular agents, and anti-inflammatory agents).

Furthermore, we intend to accelerate efforts to enable the early development and stable supply of the “T-705” anti-influenza virus agent currently being developed, and thereby respond to society's need, in light of possible large-scale human casualties, to prepare against a feared pandemic of a new type of influenza.

As the Fujifilm Group's core business in the “treatment” area, we intend to make good use of the management resources of other Group companies to strengthen our R&D and production technology capabilities in order to be able to produce a steady stream of candidate compounds for world-standard new drug. In this way, we seek to meet our corporate responsibilities in the promotion of global health care through new drug development.

We ask for your ongoing support as we pursue these objectives.

Masuji Sugata
President