Crown Bioscience Enters Japanese Market via Strategic Partnership with Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories

Crown Bioscience, Inc., a leading global drug discovery and development service company, has entered into a strategic partnership with Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories, Ltd, a Japan-based company engaged in the provision of preclinical and clinical drug development services for pharmaceutical companies.

The initial focus of the agreement is for Shin Nippon Biomedical Laboratories (SNBL) to promote Crown Bioscience (Crown) services to its Japanese client base, in doing so extending SNBL’s service offering. As part of the agreement, SNBL shall be the exclusive representative for Crown in promoting Crown’s unique translational science services including the world’s largest collection of Patient Derived Xenograft (PDX) models.

The partnership is strategically important for Crown and marks another significant step in expanding its international footprint following the company’s recent expansion into Europe during which Crown acquired PRECOS Ltd in July 2013. SNBL has multiple facilities across Japan, the US, China and Cambodia and as such offers Crown access to a global target audience. While Crown is the world’s leading supplier of oncology services, with a global footprint spanning three major continents in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, Japan is seen as a market with significant further potential. As a result of the partnership, both companies will also look at the potential to co-develop new models and services leveraging their respective expertise in Oncology/Diabetes and non-human primate model development.

Jean-Pierre Wery, President of Crown comments: “This strategic partnership offers Crown an excellent opportunity to develop a greater understanding of the Japanese market to further develop unique cutting-edge models. It is the first time that SNBL has agreed to represent an overseas company in such a deal. We are delighted to be partnering with the largest preclinical contract research organisation in Japan as part of our international business strategy to develop our services in the Far East.”

Ryoichi Nagata, CEO and President of SNBL comments: “SNBL is committed to providing our customers with fast and precise results across the entire drug development spectrum, from early discovery research to late-stage clinical trials. This unique partnership with Crown will enable us to strengthen our service offering, and also to collaborate on a variety of pre-clinical projects, utilising unique clinically relevant models, with a shared goal of improving patient care and treatment outcomes. Our expertise in preclinical development provides a perfect complement to Crown’s existing global services.”

Jean-Pierre Wery continues: “We are looking forward to working with SNBL to increase business opportunities with prospective customers across Japan and the Far East. Japan is one of the fastest growing pharmaceutical markets and there is great potential to help our clients working in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to redefine translational research and establish ground-breaking therapeutics via our drug discovery solutions.”