“Doing basic research as a synthetic organic chemist was great fun, but after several years I really wanted to do more practical research,” said Kenji Hayakawa, Head of Research Planning and Operations at the Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Tsukuba, Japan. Drug discovery research today requires a concerted effort by many people with a wide variety of technical skills and expertise. Mountains of information and data needs to be managed, protected, and directed to the right people. Budgets need to be made and costs tracked. “I’m responsible for monitoring research programs and their budgets and to bring together people with the right expertise needed to make steady progress,” said Kenji.
“One of my jobs is to coordinate research work at Tsukuba with scientists at NIBR’s other locations,” said Kenji. Tsukuba’s scientists have a long tradition of working together with their parent company. “When we were developing AAE581, a cathepsin K inhibitor for osteoporosis, we had a close and dynamic collaboration with our colleagues in Basel,” said Kenji. At the time Kenji was a chemistry unit head supporting the program that eventually produced AAE581, now in Phase II clinical trials in the U.S. and Europe.
Kenji’s international training prepared him well for his current position. With post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Zürich and Harvard University, Kenji is as comfortable in Switzerland and Boston as he is at home. Traveling the world, experiencing other cultures, and meeting people from different countries has been rewarding, but that is eclipsed by the importance of the job that has to be done. “Drug discovery research has a clear purpose; it’s application oriented and developing useful drugs is a socially meaningful accomplishment,” said Kenji, “Helping make all this go smoothly and seeing real progress makes it that much more worthwhile.”
(*) On October 1, 2004 Kenji Hayakawa changed position and became Secretary General of the Novartis Foundation (Japan) for the Promotion of Science.
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