Chika YoshinagaPharma Business Advisor

Dr. Yoshinaga has more than two decades industry experience. She was trained as a physician. She started her venture capital career at NIF SMBC Ventures Co, Ltd, the second largest VC firm in Japan, where she headed the European life sciences area and directed equity investments in a number of biotech companies that achieved successful exits.

From there she moved to Sofinnova Partners, one of the largest and oldest European venture capital firms, to become Chief Representative of their Shanghai office where she set strategy for investing in China-based firms, including start-ups, development-stage, pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

After that, Dr. Yoshinaga returned to Japan to work for Quintiles(IQVIA) in a new ventures capacity, responsible for identifying equity investments and M&A transactions to drive growth of the core business as well as exploring the new adjacent market opportunities in Japan and China.

She has developed a broad network of contacts at Chinese, Japanese and European companies to facilitate successful collaborations. Dr. Yoshinaga has acquired a deep knowledge and understanding of the Chinese healthcare market, including the R&D, regulatory and commercial environments.

Dr. Yoshinaga has been dedicating to providing regulatory, clinical, business development as well as financing advice to western small to mid-sized companies seeking to enter China and Japan markets.

Her successful achievements include
- supporting a U.S. company to submit a drug master file in China
- European company to license their product to a major Chinese pharmaceutical company
- European biotech to form an advisory board in Japan including clinical and regulatory experts
- European biotech company to form partnership with Japanese pharma and successfully launched the product on Japanese market
- Australian company to out-license to a Japan-based multi-national - company, etc.