Business Wire

Crown Bioscience and MBL Enter Joint Venture to Provide Advanced Preclinical Services for Japanese Customers

12.5.2022 09:00:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release

Share

Crown Bioscience and Medical & Biological Laboratories (MBL), JSR Life Sciences companies, today announced the formation of a joint venture, to further expand the provision of Crown Bioscience’s preclinical services to Japanese customers.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220511005724/en/

To view this piece of content from mms.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.

Crown Bioscience and MBL Enter Joint Venture to Provide Advanced Preclinical Services for Japanese Customers (Photo: Business Wire)

The new entity named “Crown Bioscience & MBL”, is a long-term strategic partnership that is expected to accelerate growth for both companies. The initial focus is to provide preclinical and translational services to expand Crown Bioscience’s offerings in Japan. The agreement will enhance Crown Bioscience’s current distributor model and establish a local presence to ensure premium service delivery in Japan.

Based in Tokyo, Crown Bioscience & MBL will establish a local team led by an experienced General Manager, Hiroki Itou, Executive Officer of MBL and General Manager, Diagnostic & Research Reagents Department at JSR.

The new company will leverage each organisations’ respective areas of excellence and expertise, combining Crown Bioscience’s world-class preclinical and translational service capabilities with MBL’s deep knowledge and experience of the Japanese pharmaceutical market. The company, established in April 2022, is expected to initiate services from September 2022.

Commenting on the establishment of the new company, Armin Spura PhD, CEO of Crown Bioscience, noted that the agreement will extend and deepen the current partnership with MBL. He said: “Japan will play a significant part in Crown Bioscience and MBL’s long-term strategic vision. Our new company has been created to better serve the evolving needs of the Japanese biopharmaceutical community, and to serve our Japanese customers more effectively. I am excited to further develop our synergies with MBL – a trusted partner in the Japanese life sciences sector.”

Hiroki Itou, President of Crown Bioscience & MBL commented: “Our two companies share a deep respect and identical values in the way we conduct business. I am confident that together we will be able to provide a unique and innovative portfolio of services that will accelerate drug discovery and development in Japan.”

###

About Crown Bioscience
Crown Bioscience, a JSR Life Sciences company, is a global contract research organization (CRO) providing preclinical and translational platforms to advance oncology, immuno-oncology, and immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID). The company is the only preclinical CRO to provide tumor organoid services utilizing HUB technology and has the world’s largest commercially available PDX collection. Crown Bioscience helps deliver superior drug candidates to ensure that patients get the right treatment at the right time. Founded in 2006, Crown Bioscience has ten facilities in the US, Europe and Asia. Find out more: www.crownbio.com.

About Medical & Biological Laboratories Co., Ltd.
Medical & Biological Laboratories (MBL) was established in 1969 as the first antibody manufacturer in Japan, and researches, develops, manufactures, and sells reagents of in vitro diagnostics (IVD) and reagents for basic research. It has now expanded its business not only to the immunological field but also to the field of genetic diagnosis. In the IVD business, we develop and sell IVD reagents for autoimmune diseases, cancer, infectious diseases, etc. Particularly in the field of autoantibody diagnosis, we are expanding our product lineup as a top manufacturer in Japan and contributing to medical care in this field where there are many intractable diseases. In the field of oncology, we are contributing to personalized medicine by developing companion diagnostics that predict the effects of drugs.

To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.

Contact information

Media Enquiries:
Crown Bioscience
Louise Stenson
pr@crownbio.com

Medical & Biological Laboratories
Youichi Kozuka
kouhou@mbl.co.jp

About Business Wire

For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.

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

Safe Software to Increase Global Headcount by Over 15% as Demand for AI-Ready Data Grows2.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release

Safe Software, the creator of FME, the only All-Data, Any-AI enterprise integration platform with true support for spatial data, today announced it is recruiting for more than 60 roles throughout the remainder of 2026. The hiring will take the company past 400 employees, increasing headcount by over 15%, with new positions across the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. The expansion follows a year in which Safe crossed $100 million in annual revenue, growing close to 20 percent year over year and moving ahead of schedule on its target of $250 million by 2028. The company also grew its employee base by over 20% in the same period. "The incredible growth that we’ve seen over the last 30+ years at Safe has always been a testament to the great people behind what we do," said Don Murray, Co-Founder and CEO of Safe Software. "Almost every organization we speak to is trying to get its data ready for AI, and most of them are realizing that the hard part is not the model, it is the da

Egon Zehnder Names Ayşe Güçlü Onur Global Human Resources Practice Leader2.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release

Egon Zehnder has appointed Ayşe Güçlü Onur as Global Leader of its Human Resources Practice. This appointment comes as companies and boards increasingly look to CHROs to help shape business strategy, lead transformation, build leadership pipelines, and navigate major shifts in culture and the workforce. "CHROs used to be evaluated by how well they supported the business. Today, the best drive it," said Onur. "Our role is to help CHROs move from a seat at the table to a hand in business growth. We help them connect leadership decisions, talent, and culture directly to elevated performance. That's the shift Egon Zehnder is built to guide with our leadership advisory services." Egon Zehnder’s Human Resources Practice partners with companies to discover, develop, and transform future-ready CHROs, helping them shape the future of the function. This includes executive search, leadership assessment and development, board effectiveness, culture, succession planning, organizational transformati

Owkin to License K Pro AI Scientist and Multimodal Oncology and Immunology Data to Boehringer Ingelheim2.9.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release

Owkin, the agentic AI company striving to transform drug discovery and development for biopharma, today announced a license agreement with Boehringer Ingelheim for K Pro, Owkin’s AI Scientist, together with multimodal patient data, aiming to speed up the discovery process across multiple indications in oncology and immunology. This agreement builds upon an initial pilot undertaken by Owkin with Boehringer in 2025. In that pilot Owkin delivered deep spatial insights into the tumor microenvironment of a gene target through its MOSAIC dataset. Under the new agreement, Owkin will license multimodal oncology data to Boehringer and will generate new multimodal data in immunology. Owkin licenses, sources and generates multimodal patient data in collaboration with its global patient data network. Boehringer Ingelheim’s teams will access and analyze this data through K Pro, which provides a single environment to interrogate data and run reproducible analyses. K Pro’s reasoning capabilities supp

Biocytogen Enters into Non-Exclusive Licensing Agreement with Qilu Pharmaceutical for a Fully Human VHH Antibody to Support Innovative Drug Development in Neuroscience2.9.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release

Biocytogen Pharmaceuticals (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (“Biocytogen”, SSE: 688796; HKEX: 02315) today announced that it has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Qilu Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (“Qilu Pharmaceutical”) for a fully human VHH antibody molecule. Under the agreement, Biocytogen will grant Qilu Pharmaceutical non-exclusive rights to a fully human VHH antibody molecule to support its research and development of innovative therapeutics in the neuroscience field. The licensed VHH antibody molecule was generated from Biocytogen’s proprietary RenNano® platform. The RenNano® platform is designed to discover fully human VHH antibody molecules with favorable specificity, binding affinity, and developability, and can generate molecular building blocks for the design and development of VHH antibodies, bispecific/multispecific antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates, and other innovative modalities. Through this license, Qilu Pharmaceutical may advance the research and development o

Croma-Pharma Introduces Electronic Instructions for Use Across the saypha ® Portfolio2.9.2026 14:37:00 EEST | Press release

Croma-Pharma has introduced electronic Instructions for Use (eIFU) across its saypha® portfolio in markets where applicable regulations permit electronic Instructions for Use to replace printed versions. The transition expands digital access to essential product information for healthcare professionals while reducing the use of printed documentation. Healthcare professionals can access the current approved Instructions for Use by scanning the QR code on the saypha® folding box. The eIFU platform provides direct digital access to the latest approved Instructions for Use. "Innovation extends beyond product development. It also includes how we provide healthcare professionals with access to essential product information," said Andreas Prinz, Chief Executive Officer of Croma-Pharma. "The introduction of electronic Instructions for Use across the saypha® portfolio reflects our focus on practical digital solutions that support healthcare professionals and align with evolving regulatory requi

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
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye