Designed to provide a guide for pharmaceutical companies seeking technical partnerships, this report contains profiles of 51 selected venture-capital firms with drug discovery capabilities such as needs identification, screening, efficacy assessment, and drug delivery systems, etc. In addition, business models developed by 9 leading companies are included here as well as the findings of face-to-face interviews with those company representatives.

The Japanese pharmaceutical industry is facing challenges over the past few years, such as modification of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law, increasing foreign investments, and major mergers and acquisitions. In this rapidly changing industrial environment, co-working with venture companies is considered to be key to survival and further growth in the market. On the other hand, prompted by some failures in partnerships with foreign venture firms in the past, and delayed market entries in Japan, we hear a lot of arguments for whether or not such partnership strategies can be justified.

Despite the circumstances, the Japanese pharmaceutical industry, which has always been playing second fiddle to the Western markets, is seeing a drastic change accelerated by the enhanced government support, for example, launch of "Biotechnology Strategy Conference" which is designed to cope with the needs in the emerging post-genomic age.