Rigaku and SPERA PHARMA Initiate Strategic Partnership to Advanced Pharmaceutical Development
17.4.2025 18:00:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Rigaku Corporation, a Group company of Rigaku Holdings Corporation (headquarters: Akishima, Tokyo; CEO: Jun Kawakami; hereinafter “Rigaku”), and SPERA PHARMA, Inc. (headquarters: Osaka; President & Representative Director: Keitaro Iwaki; hereinafter “SPERA PHARMA”) have initiated a strategic partnership aimed at accelerating and transforming pharmaceutical development by leveraging the two companies’ cutting-edge technologies and extensive expertise.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250417047994/en/
Left: Keitaro Iwaki, President & Representative Director, SPERA PHARMA; Right: Jun Kawakami, President & CEO, Rigaku
SPERA PHARMA will use XtaLAB Synergy-ED, an integrated platform for electronic diffraction provided by Rigaku, for contract analytical services, thereby offering customers robust support in pharmaceutical development.
The XtaLAB Synergy-ED incorporates 3D ED/MicroED1, which is utilized for the structure analysis of substances, including microscopic crystals and minute quantities of crystalline powder. This sophisticated technology provides sufficiently high resolution to determine atomic-level structures, enabling the detailed elucidation of molecular structures of organic compounds and similar substances.
SPERA PHARMA is currently the world’s only company in the pharmaceutical industry offering contract analytical services with the XtaLAB Synergy-ED. Rigaku will extend technical support to SPERA PHARMA for its contract analytical operations.
Furthermore, the two companies are collaborating closely to advance research utilizing the XtaLAB Synergy-ED and to actively share information on the application methods and analytical technologies.
Through this partnership, Rigaku and SPERA PHARMA aim to provide robust support at the forefront of pharmaceutical development, playing pivotal roles in pioneering the future of medicine.
1: Stands for “Three-Dimensional Electron Diffraction/Microcrystal Electron Diffraction.” A method for analysis of crystalline structures using electronic diffraction.
Example of Joint Research and Use
“Detection of Hydrogen Atoms Using Only 3D ED/MicroED and Contribution to Structure Determining Salts or Cocrystals,” Crystal Growth ＆ Design, 2025, 25, 1, 129–135
URL: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.cgd.4c01421
(Registration required to read.)
About the Rigaku Group
Since its establishment in 1951, the engineering professionals of the Rigaku group have been dedicated to benefiting society with leading-edge technologies, notably including its core fields of X-ray and thermal analysis. With a market presence in over 90 countries and some 2,000 employees from 9 global operations, Rigaku is a solution partner in industry and research analysis institutes. Our overseas sales ratio has reached approximately 70% while sustaining an exceptionally high market share in Japan. Together with our customers, we continue to develop and grow. As applications expand from semiconductors, electronic materials, batteries, environment, resources, energy, life science to other high-tech fields, Rigaku realizes innovations “To Improve Our World by Powering New Perspectives.”
For details, please visit rigaku-holdings.com/english
About SPERA PHARMA
SPERA PHARMA was established in July 2017 in the Juso area of Yodogawa-ku, Osaka. It is a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) specializing in Chemistry, Manufacturing and Controls (CMC) pharmaceutical sciences, including process chemistry, formulation development, and analytical development, as well as the manufacturing of investigational drugs. The company’s expert research team, which has extensive experience and proven results, works flexibly in all phases of pharmaceutical development from the early stage to final drug application. SPERA PHARMA is a one-stop provider of comprehensive services and solutions to meet customer needs. For further information, please visit spera-pharma.co.jp/en
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250417047994/en/
Contacts
Press Contact:
Sawa Himeno
Head of Communications Dept., Rigaku Holdings Corporation
prad@rigaku.co.jp
+81 90 6331 9843
Ayako Tsuboi
Marketing Communications, Sales Dept., SPERA PHARMA, Inc.
mkouhou@spera-pharma.co.jp
+81 6-7653-6818
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
www.businesswire.com
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
FDA Issues Modified Risk Tobacco Product Orders for 20 ZYN Nicotine Pouch Products30.6.2026 19:19:00 EEST | Press release
Philip Morris International Inc. (PMI) (NYSE: PM) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued Modified Risk Tobacco Product (MRTP) orders for 20 variants of ZYN nicotine pouch products. These are the first MRTP orders granted for nicotine pouches, allowing PMI U.S. to market the following claim for the authorized ZYN products: “Using ZYN instead of cigarettes puts you at a lower risk of mouth cancer, heart disease, lung cancer, stroke, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis.” “FDA’s decision is an important moment for the more than 45 million legal-age nicotine consumers in America,” saidStacey Kennedy, PMI U.S. CEO. “Today’s news ensures these adultshave access to accurate, science-based information, including FDA-authorized evidence that switching from cigarettes to ZYN reduces the risk of smoking-related diseases like heart disease and lung cancer,” she added. “More broadly, it reinforces the agency’s science-based approach to evaluating products across the co
Caidya Announces Strategic Combination with Simbec-Orion Bridging Early Scientific Insight and Global Clinical Execution30.6.2026 18:00:00 EEST | Press release
Caidya today announced a strategic combination with Simbec-Orion designed to close the divide between early scientific insight and global clinical execution. The combination of Caidya and Simbec-Orion creates a differentiated specialty clinical CRO platform that enables programs to scale, maintaining focus, speed, and accountability. The strategic combination brings together complementary strengths to create a more complete development partner for innovative biopharma companies. With established operations across Europe, the Americas, APAC, and China, the combined organization provides meaningful expertise and execution capabilities in the regions that matter most. Simbec-Orion brings early-phase clinical pharmacology capabilities alongside deep therapeutic expertise for later stage complex oncology and rare disease trials, helping sponsors shape critical decisions early in the development lifecycle. Together, the organizations strengthen their ability to support complex, cross-border
Archer® Proves Purpose-Built AI Beats General-Purpose LLMs on Regulatory Change Management: 95% Verified Accuracy, 80x Faster, 92% Lower Cost30.6.2026 17:13:00 EEST | Press release
For enterprises deploying AI in compliance, a wrong date is a missed deadline. The more dangerous failure is a wrong answer the model returns with high confidence, one that flows silently into a compliance calendar and is only discovered after the window has passed. Archer® today released results showing purpose-built AI beats a general-purpose large language model (LLM) on regulatory work, and it’s not close. This head-to-head test compared Archer’s purpose-built, vertical-specific AI and proprietary data sets against a leading general-purpose LLM, on a core compliance task: determining the publication, effective and comment-close dates of regulatory documents across six jurisdictions. General-purpose models are a genuine breakthrough, and this is no referendum on their quality. The question Archer set out to answer is narrower and more practical: what it takes to make a specific, high-stakes determination reliable, fast and affordable at scale. A vertical, domain-focused process, gro
Altasciences Supports Key Development Milestone for Steel Therapeutics’ Lead Therapeutic Candidate, Fizurex™30.6.2026 17:08:00 EEST | Press release
Altasciences, a leading drug development organization, today announced a significant milestone in the development of Steel Therapeutics, Inc.’s pivotal toxicology study for its lead product candidate, Fizurex™, for the treatment of anal fissures. The successful completion of the study plays a significant role in the advancement of Fizurex™ toward first-in-human trials. The GLP-compliant study demonstrated a favorable safety profile, which has advanced Steel Therapeutics' plans to submit an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for Fizurex™ to the FDA in Q3 2026. Fizurex™, a patent-pending, single-use topical wipe, was designed to provide a standardized, accessible treatment option for a painful and often undertreated medical condition. The product builds on years of use through compounding pharmacy prescriptions and is now advancing toward clinical development and regulatory review. "We are proud to have supported Steel Therapeutics with the generation of the high-quality safety d
Interactive Brokers Expands Access to Korean Equities with Launch of Nextrade ATS30.6.2026 17:00:00 EEST | Press release
Interactive Brokers (Nasdaq: IBKR), an automated global broker, today announced the launch of select Korean equities through Nextrade, South Korea's first Alternative Trading System (ATS). The addition of Nextrade builds on Interactive Brokers' earlier launch of the Korea Exchange (KRX), through which it became the first major US-based broker to provide global investors with direct access to Korean equities. Clients trading on Nextrade benefit from significantly extended trading hours and access to additional liquidity. Interactive Brokers has enabled IB SmartRouting℠ across both the Korea Exchange (KRX) and Nextrade, automatically routing orders to the venue offering the best price. This helps clients achieve best execution while providing greater flexibility and more opportunities to participate in one of Asia's most dynamic equity markets. Korea's equity market ranks among the top global exchanges by market capitalization and is home to world-leading companies such as Samsung Electr
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom