News from EU-Japan Business Round Table’s member NEC Japan establishes European subsidiaries to strengthen its work on AI drug development

NEC Corporation*, headquartered in Japan, is a leader in integrating IT and network technologies, and offers advanced technologies used by industry, government, other organisations and by NEC itself to help solve social issues. Since 2019 its healthcare division has been using AI technology, biomedical science and its ICT expertise for the development of advanced therapies.

In a realignment to streamline NEC’s AI-empowered, drug research and development activities in Europe, previously established, NEC OncoImmunity and newly established, NEC Bio Therapeutics became subsidiaries of NEC Bio B.V of the Netherlands. NEC OncoImmunity (NOI) will continue its research activities linking drug research and AI technology to empower cancer immunotherapy with artificial intelligence by developing machine learning-based software to identify optimal neoantigen targets for personalised cancer vaccines and cell therapies along with its focus on developing vaccines for infectious diseases.  

NEC Bio Therapeutics (NBT), in Germany, will lead on clinical development and the clinical strategy of assets in the drug development pipeline, including clinical trials in oncology. All three companies will work with partners to facilitate pre-clinical and clinical development in infectious disease and oncology fields.

Mr Akira Kitamura, CEO, NEC Bio B.V., said: “NEC Bio’s mission is to bring novel therapies to patients across the globe, to improve their quality of life and health outcomes. I am confident that with NOI’s pioneering research, along with the strong clinical expertise of NBT, we can deliver on that mission. NEC Bio’s success will be a strong growth driver for NEC's Healthcare and Life Science business."

Europe has been an attractive centre for life sciences companies, particularly the Netherlands, after the move of European Medical Agency, from London to Amsterdam in 2019. Especially after the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2017, the Netherlands became an attractive country for many pharmaceutical companies, which makes it easier for NEC to be in the vicinity of multinational life sciences companies. Also, the establishment of NBT and the previously established NOI, made NEC’s choice to centre its activities in Europe. With NEC Laboratories Europe housing the Life Sciences Innovation hub in Germany, Europe is the obvious choice for managing several life sciences activities. Therefore, the geographical location of NEC Bio and its subsidiaries NEC OncoImmunity and NEC Bio Therapeutics facilitates the use of the European clinical network and regulatory infrastructure for immunotherapies. Together with other leading cancer vaccine companies active in the personalized neoantigen field like BioNTech, CureVac, Nykode, Evaxion, Nouscom and others, a vivid entrepreneurial and scientific environment in Central and Northern Europe has been created. Especially the proximity to NEC’s partner company Transgène located in Strasbourg, France, will enable an efficient collaboration on the development of the viral carrier-based personalized neoantigen cancer vaccine TG4050.

*NEC was a founder member of the EU-Japan Business Round Table in 1999. In November 2022, Nobuhiro Endo, Executive Advisor to NEC became the Chair of the BRT’s Japan-side.