Peptides are widely used as one of very important active pharmaceutical ingredients for anticancer drugs, therapeutic agents for gynopathy, metabolic diseases such as diabetes and various other unmet diseases. Due to progressing diversification of modalities in the pharmaceutical industries from small molecule and biologics, peptides based medicines have been expected as a middle-size molecule pharmaceutical together with oligonucleotides.

Under such circumstance, it is crucial for peptide manufacturing to achieve lower cost and higher quality for increasing accessibility to global patients and in addition, the technology has to meet global standard of environmental care under increasing attention to SDG.

Jitsubo’s core peptide synthetic technology, Molecular Hiving™  (Tag assisted liquid phase synthesis) invented by Prof. K. Chiba of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technologies and incepted to Jitsubo in 2005, is now proven to be a commercially viable unique synthesis technology with low cost, high quality and green chemistry expectation.

In 2020, Jitsubo entered to exclusive CMO partnership agreement with Bachem AG, a global leader of peptide CMO, and now Molecular Hiving™ is utilized for manufacturing of various pharmaceutical APIs and cosmetic products through this relationship. At the same time, the technology is attracting attentions from global pharmaceutical companies due to its green chemistry nature.

In 2021, Jitsubo became a subsidiary of SPERA PHARMA, Inc. (Astena Holdings group) which not only provides sustainable growth opportunities for Jitsubo but also enables expanding total solution services through group’s diversified capabilities in CMC and drug manufacturing.

We will continue to strive towards realization of our vision of“Enrich the world with smiles” by leveraging our group capabilities.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Chief Executive Officer

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Hideya Mizufune, Ph.D.