Chairman of the Board of Directors, Tohru Mizushima

LTT Bio-Pharma was founded based on the objective to develop remedies applying the Drug Delivery System (DDS) technology discovered by Dr. Yutaka MIZUSHIMA (Professor Emeritus of St. Marianna University, a past member of The House of Councilors of The National Diet of Japan).

DDS is a technology enabling required amounts of drugs to be optimally delivered to required sites of action at the required time. As is well known, it takes considerable time and cost to develop a novel drug. Thus LTT Bio-Pharma has adopted a strategy of improving delivery of drugs currently used clinically by applying DDS technology. Thereby, it is expected that less safety tests will be required, development times reduced, and success rates improved. Indeed, Lipo-PGE1, a DDS remedy of a lipid microsphere formulation of prostaglandin E1 (PGE1) incorporated into soybean oil microspheres and delivered selectively to the affected sites, was approved as a remedy in as short as 7 years from the start of research (usually it takes 15-20 years), and sold in increasing volume of more than 50 billion yen at the peak time.

LTT Bio-Pharma went public in 2004 and became a business organization supported by many stockholders. Since then, the development of many remedies has smoothly progressed. However, recently two large setbacks unfortunately happened one after the other. The first was the bankruptcy of Asclepius Co., Ltd. due to illicit dealings caused by an ex-president of Asclepius. LTT Bio-Pharma had incorporated Asclepius Co., Ltd. as a subsidiary company to strengthen its supporting foundations of drug discovery business by making sure of stable benefits of LTT Bio-Pharma (LTT Bio-Pharma has never been involved in the illicit dealings described above). The other unfortunate occurrence was that Dr. Yutaka MIZUSHIMA, the founder of LTT Bio-Pharma and core person in Research and Development of LTT Bio-Pharma, passed away suddenly. We deeply apologize to stockholders for their concerns regarding these unfortunate events.

Nevertheless, LTT Bio-Pharma battled hard to overcome these unfortunate setbacks. LTT Bio-Pharma disestablished Healthcare Division, carried out employment adjustment of excess personnel to concentrate resources on the business of research and development of drugs—-the core business of LTT Bio-Pharma. Simultaneously, LTT Bio-Pharma performed substantial cost reduction including extensive reward reduction of members of the board of directors. By taking these stern actions LTT Bio-Pharma is predicted to restore profitability for the first time since it was listed on the market. LTT Bio-Pharma asserts that the framework of Research and Development will be carried out under the leadership of myself, Dr. Tohru MIZUSHIMA, a nephew of the late Dr. Yutaka MIZUSHIMA, who has collaborated in research with Dr. Yutaka MIZUSHIMA at LTT Bio-Pharma for several years (I succeeded as Chairman of the Board of Directors of LTT Bio-Pharma as of July 1, 2008). I have been engaged in drug discovery research work in both the wider pharmaceutical industry and in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of a national university of Japan for 20 years. In particular, I was appointed as the first Director of the Research Institute for Drug Discovery established at Kumamoto University ahead of other national universities of Japan. The Research Institute was founded with the aim of conducting advanced drug discovery and development and its inception had a great impact on the pharmaceutical industry in Japan. Now, we will continue to apply our rich experiences to the continued expansion of promoting safe and effective remedies.

As mentioned in “formulations under Development,” several promising remedies are currently being investigated. It is true that LTT Bio-Pharma endured a big loss of missing Dr. Yutaka MIZUSHIMA. However, since a new organization system in which all company staff members cooperate in one mind has been established, we deeply ask all stockholders to understand our situation and continue to support LTT Bio-Pharma as we look ahead to the future.