Takeda has announced the opening of a new research facility in San Diego, California. Extending Takeda’s 14-year presence in San Diego, the 165,000-square-foot facility is home to more than 250 employees focused on leveraging specialized drug discovery technologies and advancing discovery research in gastroenterology and neuroscience. The facility is home to four research platform groups – structural biology, early target discovery, computational biology and biologics – that provide key capabilities to discover and advance promising molecules. The new research center in San Diego complements Takeda’s global Research & Development center in Cambridge, Massachusetts and its other global research site in Shonan, Japan.

“Our San Diego research center demonstrates an ideal balance between highly specialized internal research competencies and dedication to external partnerships both within the local community and on a global scale,” said Steve Hitchcock, Ph.D., Head of Research at Takeda. “By consulting with and leveraging our relationships with academic and industry partners and patient groups, we are able to operate nimbly and efficiently to advance early discovery research that could potentially translate into transformative, life-changing therapies for patients in need, complementing our efforts in our other global research centers in Cambridge and Shonan.”

Takeda’s R&D efforts are in four therapeutic areas – Oncology, Gastroenterology (GI), Neuroscience and Rare Diseases – with targeted investments also committed to Plasma-Derived Therapies (PDT) and Vaccines. With a modality-diverse pipeline aligned to its therapeutic area strategies and an externally oriented mindset toward drug discovery and development, Takeda collaborates with partners around the world to unlock innovation and deliver potentially transformative therapies to patients. Today, more than 50 percent of Takeda’s research pipeline focuses on non-small molecules, including biologics, peptides, oligonucleotides, cell and gene therapy, the microbiome and other modalities. The work being done in San Diego today represents the future of Takeda’s pipeline.

In addition to the internal research conducted on site, the San Diego research center plays an important role in connecting local collaborators with Takeda’s global network of more than 200 research partners. Additionally, in the last three years, Takeda, through its venture group, has committed $35 million to Southern California startup companies, underscoring its commitment to the active life sciences cluster in the San Diego and broader California area. The company supports the local community through continued engagement in patient advocacy and disease awareness, children & STEM education and the environment. For example, since 2005, Takeda has partnered with the San Diego Center for Children – the region’s oldest children’s non-profit, to support children with mental, emotional and behavioral health challenges. In addition, Takeda provides over 25 paid college-level student internships in the sciences each year.