Our President & CEO
Fumito Wada, Ph.D
Looking back, I have been vaguely interested in “medicine” since I was in junior high school. When someone close to me became seriously ill, my interest changed to “I want to make medicines that can help more people,” and I entered the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Osaka University to make that happen.
The first time I encountered oligonucleotide therapeutics at the university, I was struck by how futuristic and fascinating it was, and at the time I thought “It’s a panacea!” However, as I proceeded with my basic research, I realized that in order to release a new type of medicine to the world, it is not enough to have “excellent effects and efficacy”; there are many other major hurdles that must be overcome. I began to think about starting my own business in order to deliver this still immature “panacea” to patients.
Nucleic acid drug discovery research was being conducted jointly by the laboratory of Dr. Satoshi Obika at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Osaka University, to which I belonged, and the laboratory of Dr. Mariko Shiba, a physician at the adjacent National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Research Institute (our company’s founder).
During my research activities in Dr. Shiba’s laboratory, I had the opportunity to meet many patients suffering from diseases. I want to deliver this “panacea” to these patients as soon as possible. We, who have the best understanding of nucleic acid medicine, decided that we had to take a leap of faith and established Liid Pharma.
The patients that Dr. Shiba sees are those who suffer from abnormal lipid metabolism. We decided to name the company “Liid Pharmaceuticals, Inc.” by removing the “P” for problems from “Lipid” in order to truly eliminate the problems associated with lipid through oligo drugs.
The technologies utilized by Liid Pharma, such as modified nucleic acids, ligand conjugation technology (drug delivery technology), and safety control technology, are “reliable” technologies for the next generation that have been optimized after many years of research in academia. We will continue to take on the challenge of bringing smiles to the faces of as many patients as possible with these superior technologies.