Delivering new medicines to patients suffering from Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD) is a major challenge. There are various hurdles to be overcome, such as the large number of patients in a large number of different regions, the lack of marketability, and resistance to medicines. Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Takeda) is following a corporate mission of "striving towards better health for patients worldwide though leading innovation in medicine". These guiding principles lead to the values of Integrity, Fairness, Honesty and Perseverance that make up what we call "Takeda-ism". As part of its contribution to R&D for NTDs, Takeda collaborates with global Product Development Partnerships (PDPs). In this symposium, the "Drug Discovery Booster" project to accelerate and expand discovery of new drugs for Leishmaniasis and Chagas disease with Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) and other pharmaceutical companies is introduced. Proprietary compound libraries and the drug discovery expertise of various partners was applied to this new drug discovery approach. An overview of our research projects in malaria, tuberculosis, and NTD is also presented. In addition to these, Takeda's Access to Medicines (ATM) strategy and activities are introduced. Lastly, we discuss a new open innovation model which is accelerated by partnership with a variety of organizations and how Takeda achieves its sustainable development goal (SDG) targets.
Keywords: Access to Medicines (ATM); Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD); Product Development Partnership (PDP); partnership.