FUJIFILM and Kyowa Hakko Kirin have reached a basic agreement to establish a joint venture in the spring of 2012 to develop highly reliable, high-quality and competitive products in the fast-growing biosimilars market.

Fujifilm and Kyowa Hakko Kirin have agreed to set up a joint venture with 50-50 capital participation for the development of biosimilars. The new venture will merge Fujifilm's advanced production technology, quality control technology and analysis technology, developed through its photographic film business over many years, with Kyowa Hakko Kirin's proprietary technologies and know-how, accumulated through its biopharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing, in order to create innovative production processes and achieve cost reduction for biosimilars. Placing much value on the development speed as well, the new venture sets a goal to start a clinical trial for the first drug candidate by 2013. The development and timely introduction of highly reliable, high-quality and cost-competitive biosimilars through this partnership will aim at establishing the position as the market leader.

With this joint venture, Fujifilm will further reinforce the foundation of the biopharmaceutical business, while tapping into its proprietary technologies and resources, to provide the market with pharmaceuticals that will help improve and maintain people's health and respond to unmet medical needs.

Kyowa Hakko Kirin will deploy a new business model by merging its own technologies with those of Fujifilm. It will utilize innovative production technologies developed through the new joint venture in the production of its line of pharmaceuticals including therapeutic antibodies. Through these initiatives, the company will be committed to provide high quality pharmaceuticals with low production cost. Kyowa Hakko Kirin will use its biotechnology to create innovative drugs for the core therapeutic areas of oncology, nephrology and immunology, thereby making its contribution to enhance people's health and well-being.