No one was sure how much of potential they had, yet I had this gut feeling that there must be something in it when you think about many years these products survived in the market.
Besides when everyone was so skeptical, I felt “Wouldn’t it be satisfying to prove everyone wrong?” It must be that rebellious streak in me that made me decide to take on the challenge.

I was initially asked to help with recruitment, but since they needed someone in the position of Chief Pharmaceutical Officer (SOSEKI), I assumed that role myself for about a year and a half until a successor was found.

What was the biggest challenge during the company start-up period?

If there had been a preceding foundation on which to create a new company, that would have been one thing, but I was first and foremost surprised to find out that we were building a company truly from scratch—no staff, no office, absolutely nothing.

We were starting from zero, with no documents such as Standards for quality assurance or anything else, and while we were building the company in a short period of time, we had to proceed with negotiations regarding the products transfer in parallel.

At first, until we found our office, we rented a small space in our partner’s office. The three key responsible managers required for a pharmaceutical company (SAN-YAKU) huddled around a desk in that cramped space, and we underwent an on-site inspection by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government there to obtain our business license.

The hardest part was having to prepare all the essential documentations, such as GQP and GVP, from scratch for inspection readiness. Initially we started with seven or eight people, then gradually grew, and by the time the office was ready, we had over ten employees.

Do you think the company has become what you envisioned first?

For the first two years, we had our hands completely full just to make sure we follow through what was needed to achieve our mission without any disruption, which was to continue seamless delivery of the transferred products to healthcare facilities.

Fortunately, the initial group of people we hired were capable of discharging those tasks without fail. Yes, I believe the initial ‘take-off’ of our company panned out very smoothly as planned without major disruptions.

Now that this phase is complete, I believe we are entering a phase where we must decide for ourselves what kind of company we want to see us grow into, in which direction we want to fly to.

We now know that the business of long-term listed products can be viable depending on how it is approached, and going forward, this business shall remain as our core, but we now must think what kind of values we can add. I believe we are entering the phase in which we can go beyond the original business framework and grow a step further to a new level.

I happened to watch a TV program, featuring Dr. Takeshi Yoro, a professor of anatomy, explaining about ‘insect anatomy’. He explained that the creatures alive at this very moment were the survivors of several hundred million years of natural selection. I was so thrilled just to think about such survival of creatures.

The fact that Long Life Medicines have survived through many years of selection probably suggests that their value has not been lost. However, to ensure they shall continue to survive long into the future, we must grapple with various challenges such as production costs and manufacturing facilities.

We do receive requests from abroad for our products, or some of our products become candidates for drug repositioning. In such cases I must admit it is quite challenging to submit renewed drug applications because data could be outdated and obsolete. However, I believe if we continue to take on these challenges, we can achieve promising results.

Otherwise, it would truly be an ‘end-of-life’ business.

At LTL Pharma there are many people who reached retirement age at other companies.
How do you feel about LTL Pharma as a company where many senior employees are actively working?

When we initially started hiring, since we were no more certain about future of the company as our own future career, we could not approach younger talents. We had to turn to senior people.

But since our headcount was limited, we needed senior talents who knew what they were doing extremely well and dedicated themselves to their work.

What happens is that people may have high level of skills with long years of training in their previous companies, as they climb the corporate ladder, many eventually become somewhat detached from hands-on work.

Just the fact that someone has climbed the corporate ladder smoothly does not make that person a good fit for this company. Since we are a small team, we must be a group of independent players who are ready to work and achieve together as a team.

Our current senior staff members are exactly that type of people, and I hope such individuals will continue to join us in the future.

As for the younger employees, while larger companies may be able to use their organizational resources to have them learn from senior staff as part of their on-the-job training, we currently do not have such extra resources left in our company. I do recognize this as a challenge for our company, and we need to further develop younger people going forward.

Younger people would feel a significant sense of fulfillment in their work, since they are entrusted with responsibilities in work. With that said, I realize we must now consider how to give them more opportunities for growth.

Back to the topic of senior employees. Our senior members do have different work styles; some wish to work full-time, while others say three days a week would suit them better. Some choose to work as contract workers rather than full-time employees. We all have diverse needs and wish to work in their own ways.

Since this company offers such diverse work styles, I think it’s an extremely good place to work for seniors.
It allows a good work life balance and it’s great for family life as well.

For those coming from new drug oriented pharmaceutical companies, I am sure they face lots of challenges they never anticipated. Nonetheless everyone seems to enjoy taking on these challenges because they have previously been through a wide range of ups and downs that accompany pharma business.

It is actually quite exciting to discover aspects of the pharmaceutical industry I previously never noticed.
Those coming from large companies might sometimes feel a bit put off in a small company like ours, but if the business model for Long Life Medicines takes off successfully, I am sure we will earn the respect we deserve. It’s exhilarating to see that the company actually thrives in a space where I used to think, “No way.”

People from such a wide array of companies and backgrounds are gathered here. It means that we have in our company such diverse corporate cultures blending together. This diversity is what makes this place so appealing.

Nowadays with remote work style widely accepted, it has become somewhat difficult to have casual daily conversations with peers outside of formal meetings.
While we have diversity in our team, there’s less time to interact and exchange ideas.
We should be able to make our company more exciting if we can encourage people to enjoy more of that.