Creating and launching Feburic (febuxostat) (2011)

The tenacity of a “one-person” drug discovery — and what lay behind it

The core of this decision lies in keeping a low-priority theme, with no visible prospect of profit, running — never shutting it down — on the smallest possible footing of a single researcher. In contrast to the 1970s Future Business Headquarters, which lacked any exit criterion and failed by scattering resources across more than fifty new ventures, Feburic held its resources tightly narrowed and, over more than twenty years, bore fruit in a single result. The organic-synthesis skills cultivated in fibres, and a culture of patient long-term investment, produced a drug with a new mechanism of action — the first in about forty years. The invention won the Prime Minister’s Prize at the National Commendation for Invention in 2015 and the Okochi Memorial Prize in 2018.

That said, a structure that entrusted the pharmaceutical business’s earnings to a single large product carried a built-in time bomb: the patent cliff. As the substance patent expired and generics came in, Feburic’s domestic sales fell sharply, and Teijin had no choice but to fill the hole with a defensive investment — buying products from Takeda Pharmaceutical. The revenue pillar that one person’s persistence had created heads for the edge with no next pillar behind it. The success story of a drug discovery is, at the same time, a mirror of the pharmaceutical business’s fate: the difficulty of keeping a pipeline continually replenished.