Kobayashi Pharmaceuticals – a Japanese manufacturer of over-the-counter pharmaceutical, personal care, and nutrition products – partnered with yet2 to launch their Open Innovation portal to seek partnerships with Japanese companies and solicit submissions from promising innovators.
Kobayashi required new animal models to evaluate efficacy of product development efforts across the following areas:
- Skin products to treat pigmentation of skin caused by healing of cuts, scars or burns
- Eyewashes for treatment of dry eye
- Nasal gargle products to clean the nasal cavity
Approach
- Working closely with Kobayashi, yet2 drafted the Need document and published it in Japanese and English on the portal
- yet2 marketed the need to the yet2 network in Japan, resulting in multiple submissions from Japanese universities
- yet2 received all submissions and filtered the most promising to share with the Kobayashi team for further review
Results
Kobayashi entered into joint research agreements with 4 universities to leverage novel animal models:
- 1 for Skin Care – a technology that was a byproduct of other research and not previously published. The submitter believes that he would not have been able to share his innovation with Kobayashi if it wasn’t for the OI Portal.
- 1 for Eyewashes – The researcher had long wanted to find evidence of a relationship between Kobayashi’s “Eyebon” and dry eye. However, he would not have proposed animal testing to Kobayashi without an approach using the OI Portal.
- 2 for Nasal Gargle – very few models can evaluate nasal mucosa, and Kobayashi found two rare technologies through the OI portal
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