Read the full story with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0607_01.html
In 1971, two innovative young Americans founded Pharmavite; the following year they developed the vitamin brand Nature Made® committed to providing high quality vitamins and supplements to retail markets for people who want to lead healthier lives. The original Pharmavite commitment has not changed for over 40 years. Today, Pharmavite LLC is one of the largest US manufacturers of high-quality vitamins, minerals and other dietary supplements, and Nature Made® is the #1 selling national vitamin and supplement brand in traditional retail scanning outlets. Pharmavite LLC has been a subsidiary of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. since 1989.
Pharmavite’s new facility in Opelika sets a new standard for manufacturing excellence. The facility is designed to produce the highest quality products, featuring state of the art technology and will be the first major vitamin facility in the US to be LEED certified.
As, the US dietary supplement market has tripled since 1995, the Opelika facility is a key part of Pharmavite’s strategic plan to meet the growing global consumer demand for health and wellness products like Nature Made supplements. It also serves as a showcase of our passion for quality, efficacy and innovation.
The company supports research with major universities on vitamins and supplements. Supporting this research is consistent with Pharmavite’s vision of “Inspiring the healthiest you through more complete nutrition wherever you are in life”.
This new facility in Opelika is the first dietary supplement facility in Alabama, a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. The production capacity will meet the company’s forecasted future growth. As part of the facility, Pharmavite has created an educational tour that it will be sharing with the community.
It is Pharmavite’s intention to provide these products globally in addition to the United States, so the new facility will contribute to people’s better health around the world.
Read the full story with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0607_02.html
On June 7 and 8, 2013, at the Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands, in Rancho Mirage, California, American President Barack Obama held a bilateral meeting, followed by a working dinner, with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China. Ridge Vineyards 2008 Geyserville Zinfandel was served with the main course – the Porterhouse steak.
Dinner diplomacy of course requires world-class cuisine, but the culinary merit of each menu item is not the sole consideration; each dish has political significance. Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, a French diplomat at the time of the Napoleonic Wars, emerged victorious from the negotiations at the Congress of Vienna due in no small part to the wines of Chateau Haut-Brion and the grand cuisine of legendary chef Marie-Antoine Carême. There is no question that Ridge Vineyards 2008 Geyserville was carefully chosen as a representation of America's influence.
China has experienced rapid and continuous economic growth, and has passed Japan to become the world's second-largest economy, after America. China is becoming a leader in both the importation and production of wine as well. It is significant that the red wine served to China's leaders was a Zinfandel-based blend. There are many American wines that are more expensive than Geyserville, such as Cabernets from Napa. A Zinfandel was likely chosen because it is a distinctly "American" variety, one that symbolizes an America that has become the world's dominant power and that has carved out its own unique position in the world, while still retaining its connections to the culture and traditions of Europe. Ridge Vineyards was acquired by Otsuka Pharmaceuticals in 1986 and is honored that, out of all the Zinfandels available, Ridge Vineyards 2008 Geyserville was chosen to represent America at this dinner.
Celebrity chef Bobby Flay, the owner and executive chef of several restaurants, including Mesa Grill, was chosen to represent America in the preparation of the meal itself.
Read the full article with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/detail.php?id=144&date=2013-04-26
Researchers, manufacturing engineers, personnel trainers, public relations staff … are members of the Awa Dance group, Otsuka Ren. And they were invited to perform Awa Dance, a 400-year-old traditional Japanese dance, at the Copenhagen Sakura Festival.
Why were we in Denmark?
Back in 2011, Otsuka entered into a long-term partnership with Danish pharmaceutical company, Lundbeck, in the world’s largest Central Nervous System alliance.
At that time, Japanese Ambassador to Denmark Toshio Sano was seated next to Otsuka Pharmaceutical President and Representative Director, Dr. Taro Iwamoto at the inauguratory event and shared a lively conversation that inspired the ambassador to invite Otsuka’s Awa Dance group to perform at the Copenhagen Sakura Festival.
That’s how after over a year of planning and preparations Otsuka Ren ended up in Denmark. The Awa Dance performers participated in various activities including a dance performance at Lundbeck’s headquarters, in which many Lundbeck employees enthusiastically joined in.
Apart from the dancing, Dr. Iwamoto and Mr. Wiinberg hosted a highly successful afternoon of discussions with leading media in Europe. The Copenhagen media event complimented the one held on March 7th in Tokushima, at which the two leaders met with members of the Japanese media.
Before the events at Lundbeck, families with strollers, older people and teens all gathered over the weekend for the 6th Copenhagen Sakura Festival in Langelinie Park, where Otsuka Ren performed.
Over 17,000 people attended the 2-day event and about 50 Otsuka Ren performers, an auditioned group of dancers and musicians formed in 1988, traveled all the way from Japan to Denmark to participate in the festival. The appreciation and enthusiasm of the audience was visible on every face present, perhaps most so when the Awa dancers performed amidst the crowd shown in the photo above.
The three days of lively and informative events well illustrated Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s presence on the global stage, both literally and figuratively.
Read the full article with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0404_01.html
The new version of POCARI SWEAT, “POCARI SWEAT ION WATER”, was launched on April 8th! This new health drink was aimed to smoothly replenish water and electrolytes lost during everyday work that offers a light sweetness, a refreshing taste with reduced calories.
The new beverage was designed to incorporate the benefits of the original POCARI SWEAT – based on the concept of a rehydration drink that smoothly replenishes water and electrolytes in the body.
The launch ceremony was held at the ANA Intercontinental Hotel in Tokyo which was packed with Japanese media to view the new television commercial for POCARI SWEAT ION WATER starring Japanese actress Kyoko Fukada.
Masayuki Umeno, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Vice President and Representative Director said, “By continuing innovation, diversity and globalization approach, Otsuka can achieve its goal to create and provide new products that contribute to people’s health”.
Taste inventor, Akihisa Takaichi, was recognized by Otsuka Pharmaceutical for his important role in working on the POCARI SWEAT ION WATER’s new refreshing taste for the past 6 years.
POCARI SWEAT is a very popular health drink from Japan that is known widely around the world. A choice of three sizes (250 ml, 500 ml and 900 ml) POCARI SWEAT ION WATER will initially be sold in supermarkets, convenience stores, drugstores and other channels throughout Japan.
Read the full article with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0401_01.html
Each year, hundreds of new staff are hired in Japan by the Otsuka Group and within Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. this year, 164 college graduates were selected to be part of the path blazing corporation.
The best and the brightest are recruited in Japan and globally every year to join the Otsuka family. And for the new hires in Japan, the passage from student life to professional life starts in Tokushima, Japan, where Otsuka was founded and where the New Staff Welcome Ceremony is held every year. The beginning of the fiscal year in Japan is April 1st, and that is the day most Japanese companies hold new hire welcome ceremonies across the country. And if parents had a chance to attend, they would be brimming with pride and even tears in the corners of their eyes, just like the day their children graduated from universities.
The event started with congratulatory and welcome speeches from nine of the company heads under the Otsuka Group. On behalf of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. President Taro Iwamoto, Ph.D. welcomed the new employees by first sharing with them what leadership meant to him: energy, the capacity to energize others, edginess for achievement, execution and passion.
And then Dr. Iwamoto asked students if they possessed what it took for them to become leaders of tomorrow. With positive replies, he said he was confident that the company will do well under them.
The ceremony is only the beginning of a one to six-month training period in Tokushima. These young men and women will learn about the history of Otsuka, the various Otsuka businesses and how to establish themselves within the company, as they bond with other new employees who may well become their teammates for many years to come.
Read the full article with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0327_01.html
Ninety-nine people with ninety-nine nationalities got together to break a world record in Beijing, China. The world record breaking event took place in Beijing Blue Ocean International Business Building where the POCARI SWEAT team members organized the March 27th sauna gathering.
The Guinness World Record was having ninety-nine nationalities be in a sauna for five minutes all at the same time. Each participant had their passports checked by the Guinness World Record official before being let into the venue. After spending five very hot minutes in the sauna, it was the perfect time to provide what these participants lost during their sweating session, fluids and electrolytes.
POCARI SWEAT ion supply drinks were passed out to all the participants as soon as they came out from the large heated room with glass walls. This health drink easily replenished the fluids and ions (electrolytes) lost while perspiring. It is an ideal beverage for those who have been sweating while playing sports, working or sitting in a sauna! It can also hydrate the body first thing in the morning.
Read the full article with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0321_01.html
Otsuka Pharmaceutical continues to increase its visibility on the global health policy stage, and recently sponsored the Healthcare in Asia 2013 conference.
It was hosted by the Economist Conferences, publisher of the esteemed magazine The Economist. The event was held on March 21st and March 22nd in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and featured a variety of speakers including the Minister of Health in Malaysia, the Secretary of Finance in the Philippines, the Deputy Minister of Health in Taiwan, numerous other senior officials from national governments and international agencies such as the World Health Organization and numerous senior figures from academia and the business world.
Although tuberculosis was not the central theme of the conference, one speaker, Dr. Arata Kochi, a former senior official at the WHO was in charge of anti-TB programs, spoke about the steadily worsening problem of multi-drug resistant TB.
Dr. Kochi noted that private healthcare sectors in Asian countries are not equipped to deal with long-term care in a cost-effective manner. Dr. Kochi noted that TB patients who are not tracked carefully, stop taking medication as soon as they feel better, which increases the spread of resistant TB strains. He explained that a well-funded anti-TB program with treatment follow-up and data collection and analysis could serve as an excellent model for diseases such as diabetes and cancer, diseases that are also increasing across Asia as people live longer.
As a sponsor, Otsuka had a booth that highlighted facts about multi-drug resistant tuberculosis and the company’s long-standing commitment to TB research. Visitors to the booth were sometimes surprised to learn from Otsuka Public Relations staff that the company was the world’s lead investor in TB drug development in 2011 (the last year for which data is available).
Read the full article with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0315_01.html
The March 15th, 2013 event kicked off as fish of all sizes swam in an aquarium in Shinagawa, Japan, while a professor of ophthalmology, Shigeru Kinoshita, from Kyoto talked about the essence of dry eye and about its latest treatment.
An Aquarium was chosen as the site for this seminar, so that the participants were able to understand what dry eye is and to learn about the similarities and differences between the eyes of fish and humans.
The body surfaces of a fish, including its eyes, are covered with mucous membranes. In contrast, during the course of evolution, the body surfaces of humans keratinized from mucous membranes into layers of skin, which is more tolerant to dryness.
The surface of human eyes, however, has remained as mucous membranes in order to retain its transparency and smooth, hairless nature. A layer of tears on top of mucous membranes covering eye surfaces are what protects the eyes from dryness. Healthy, normal mucous membranes and mucous play important roles in keeping the tears clean, as in neat and smooth rather than hygienic clean.
Professor Kinoshita pointed out that dry eye is not just about quantity of tear fluid. The eyes sense 'dryness', 'gritty/sandy sensation', 'pain', and discomfort, because mucin, which is one of the tear components, decreases and the ocular mucous membrane becomes irritated.
Japan is a leading nation when it comes to the treatment of dry eye, says Professor Kinoshita. Until recently, available medications only affected the quality of tears, but now a more proactive dry eye medication is available that can treat both mucin and the mucous membrane.
Read the full article including photos at
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0307_01.html
On March 7th, 2013, the first Otsuka Media Exchange was held at Tokushima, Japan, the origin of Otsuka just an hour south by plane from Tokyo.
Otsuka Pharmaceutical President & Representative Director, Taro Iwamoto, Ph.D. presented to the media Otsuka’s achievements over the past 3 years. He spoke about the main business areas including Central Nervous System, cardio-renal area, oncology and ophthalmology. The presentation was entitled “all for creativity”, and demonstrated Otsuka’s spirit of creativity from tip to toe.
Dr. Iwamoto pointed out that there were 2 specific types of ‘innovations’ during his presentation which showed exactly what Otsuka’s pharmaceutical business aims to offer.
First, it is innovation through “new indication in new category”, which is about the ability to take our new first-in-class-in-the-world drugs and develop them into altogether different therapeutic categories. Second, it is innovation through “prevention of disease relapses” by offering compliance-management in central nervous disorders.
Director of Fellow Qs' Research Institute, Tetsuro Kikuchi, Ph.D., talked about Otsuka’s demanding and “unsmooth” research style in the course of searching for neuropsychiatric drugs.
“Otsuka’s drug discovery does not rely on computer algorithms, but relies heavily on each and every researcher’s inspiration and his or her passion to follow through that belief - it is that spirit of never-giving-up that leads to our success” says Kikuchi.
Ulf Wiinberg, the CEO of Lundbeck, one of Otsuka’s global partners, was a guest speaker. He highlighted that Otsuka-Lundbeck partnership is one of the largest ever seen in the field of Central Nervous System and hence the enormous promise that the alliance holds for the patients.
Dr. Iwamoto noted Otsuka’s alliances are ‘horizontal collaborations’, and is the single most important factor in partnerships. Both partners should be able to contribute strengths to their mutual benefits and at times progress through friendly rivalry.
There was also a surprise performance by Japanese calligraphy artist, Souun Takeda. Master calligrapher Takeda created artwork featuring two large Japanese characters, “Sou” and “Jitsu”.
The work of art was intended to reflect Otsuka’s motto. “Sou” translates to “creation” and “Jitsu”, the process of taking an idea and turning it into reality.
The two-story high Tomato Tree stands prominently at the Tokushima Institute which was the setting where nearly fifty international and domestic journalists to hear and discuss the growth of Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s business.
Read the full story with photos at
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0224_01.html
Once again this year, Otsuka Pharmaceutical helped promote a healthy lifestyle in Japan by supporting Tokyo Marathon 2013. Every year since the first marathon in 2007, Otsuka Pharmaceutical supported the event, playing a part to help people who enjoy running to maintain their health.
Approximately 36,000 marathoners from around the world descended on Tokyo for the seventh annual Tokyo Marathon, which has a theme of "The Day We Unite.". And again this year, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Amino Value BCAA supplement endurance beverage was named official beverage of Tokyo Marathon 2013. Amino Value is an amino acid drink that supports an active sports life.
Top runners from around the world including 2012 defending champion Michael Kipkorir Kipyego from Kenya were among those at the starting line at 9AM. All were hoping to break the course record set by the Swiss runner Viktor Rothlin in 2008. As the athletes warmed up, volunteers were preparing refreshment stations along the marathon route, and providing supplies for use at aid stations, all amid the cold wind.
Just over two hours later at the finish line, Kenayan Dennis Kimetto beat last year's champion by six seconds to take the gold medal with a time of 2:06:50. Kimetto broke the course record and took home $120,000 for his victory at Tokyo Marathon 2013. Ethiopia's Aberu Kebede was the women's champion in 2:25:34.
Tokyo Marathon became the newest member of the esteemed World Marathon Majors series in last October, joining Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York.
Marathon applicants for the Tokyo event continue to grow each year. The number of marathon runners is capped at 35,500 and 500 slots are set aside for the 10K run, including slots for physically challenged athletes. Otsuka Pharmaceutical is proud to play a part in this major effort to promote a strong and healthy lifestyle in Japan and Otsuka's support of this most important event will only grow in years to come.
Read the full article with photos at
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2013/0222_01.html
How can corporate Japan help revitalize the economy by creating greater gender equality in the workplace?
That was the hot topic at the Health and Global Policy Institute (HGPI) Summit 2013 on February 22nd in Tokyo, which addresses the overall theme of reformulating the design of Japanese society for the future. While progress had been made to create a more women-friendly business atmosphere in Japan, there remains a belief that the Japanese work force will remain dominated by men. Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd.'s CEO/President, Taro Iwamoto, PhD, has a different vision.
Dr. Iwamoto shared with summit participants his view that gender empowerment will not happen by waiting for systems to change. Rather, he noted that female and younger workers are uniquely positioned as change agents in Japanese culture, as they can bypass the existing systems and ways of thinking in ways that men do not.
He also noted that, "What is lacking in Japan is leadership. Rather than discussing the issues surrounding women through various individual elements, it is critical to address the overarching issue of how to promote and develop global leaders who can pursue innovation that guides the growth of society and businesses.
Otsuka Pharmaceutical has never simply followed trends or tread well-traveled paths. Dr. Iwamoto described how Otsuka seeks to extend its innovative edge and global competitiveness by placing female managers in positions of real responsibility and accountability as leaders of global teams.
Dr. Iwamoto personally, as well as the Human Resources department, mentor talented and ambitious women to fulfill Dr. Iwamoto's vision to increase women executives at Otsuka Pharmaceutical to 50% by 2020.
Read the full story with photos at:
https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/index.php?year=2012
Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd.'s 'Read between the lines' hyponatraemia awareness advertising campaign was honoured with two Awards of Excellence at the Rx Club Show Awards Ceremony 2012.
New York's Rx Club Show is internationally renowned in the healthcare industry for showcasing the world's best healthcare advertising and recognising excellence in global healthcare communications. It honours the creative aspects of pharmaceutical advertising and promotion and is judged by a panel of industry experts that are solely centred on creativity.
The campaign is targeted at Healthcare Professionals and brings the patients' perspective to the forefront of the mind, making the campaign a highly emotive one. It was developed to promote awareness and recognition of the symptoms of hyponatraemia so that minor, as well as major symptoms are considered and drive earlier treatment and referral.
"I was truly happy and proud that we won the award. As a company in Europe that provides a treatment for hyponatraemia secondary to SIADH (syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion), we have a lot to do to raise awareness of this difficult to treat condition. It all starts with increasing the disease awareness in order to be able to identify patients who need treatment and to treat them better," said Anne-Sophie Audibert, European Product Manager - Specialty Products, Otsuka Pharmaceutical Europe Ltd.
The first award of excellence was received for an advertising awareness campaign that was published in a number of key international journals, including Kidney International. The second award was for a digital online banner advert that was hosted in a number of highly regarded electronic journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine.
Both of these serve to drive Healthcare Professionals to the www.hyponatraemia.com disease awareness website, which aims to provide education and increase the awareness of hyponatraemia.