Chemicals. (Japanese Companies in the United States).(Japanese chemical producers develop electronic commerce potential in US)(Brief Article)

Japan's top chemicals producers are only a step behind their American and European peers in embracing business-to-business Internet-based marketplaces as a way to lower input costs and boost sales volume. Like many of their counterparts, moreover, they are hedging their bets, joining or even investing in more than one on-line exchange. For instance, Japanese industry leader MITSUBISHI CHEMICAL CORP. and two of its major rivals, SHOWA DENKO K.K. and SUMITOMO CHEMICAL CO., LTD., plus DAINIPPON INK AND CHEMICALS, INC., the world's largest maker of inks and pigments, and SUMITOMO BAKELITE CO., LTD., will become members of the Global Trading Network run by CHEMATCH.COM, INC. The Houston firm's worldwide exchange brings together buyers and sellers of bulk commodity chemicals, plastics and fuels 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Among the existing investors in CheMatch.com, which has a Tokyo office (see Japan-U.S. Business Report No. 366, March 2000, p. 15), are E.I. DUPONT DE NEMOURS & CO., INC. and GENERAL ELECT RIC CO.'s big GE Plastics unit. At the same time, Mitsubishi Chemical and Sumitomo Chemical, along with MITSUI CHEMICALS, INC., are among the 12 founders of a still-on-the-drawing-boards B2B electronic-conunerce portal for buying and selling basic, intermediate, specialty and fine chemicals (see Japan-U.S. Business Report No. 369, June 2000, p. 2). For their part, Japan's biggest trading companies are financial backers of CHEMCONNECT, INC., the operator of the leading portal for trading chemicals and plastics online, and COMMERX, INC. and its PlasticsNet.Com exchange (see Japan-U.S. Business Report No. 367, April 2000, p. 2).

Like many other key players in various parts of the broad chemicals industry, big synthetic fiber manufacturer TEIJIN LTD. has identified pharmaceuticals as a core business over the medium run. Similarly, to reach this goal, the company, which now derives about 25 percent of its revenues from drugs and medical equipment, plans to do most of its clinical development in the United States. To oversee this work, which will be undertaken by contract research organizations, Teijin recently opened an office of its primary U.S. subsidiary in Princeton, New Jersey. The first product to undergo clinical development will be a treatment for Escherichia coli, including E. coli O157, the food-borne bacteria implicated in several outbreaks of food poisoning in Japan in the 1990s. Future candidates include drugs for circulatory system problems and rheumatoid arthritis. Any Teijin products commercialized in the United States and approved for sale here will be licensed to American drug companies for marketing.

The Fort Lee, New Jersey subsidiary of DAIICHI PHARMACEUTICAL CO., LTD. filed an investigational new drug application with the Food and Drug administration for a cancer therapy. Critical to the expected effectiveness of DE-310, which is designed to be administered intravenously, is a delivery system that targets the active ingredient in the product -- DX-8951, a synthetic derivative of camptothecin -- at the cancerous tumor and releases it over time. Phase I clinical studies of DE-310, which will be outsourced to a CRO, are expected to start in the fall of 2000. Daiichi Pharmaceutical is simultaneously initiating clinical development of DE-310 in the United States, Europe and Japan. It hopes for ...