Researchers create their own company

JAPANESE-based researchers with Pfizer faced a similar threat to their jobs that their Irish counterparts do now, when the company decided last year to close their lab.

However, the Japanese workers have saved their jobs by raising more than $100 million (€63m) and setting up their own company.

They plan to develop new drugs and even sell some of them back to Pfizer worldwide. The workers at Pfizer’s Japanese unit, a major research facility in the central prefecture of Aichi, were facing redundancy but they managed to raise 11.1 billion yen (€66.85 million) to start a new company — RaQualia Pharma Inc — Pfizer’s first such spin-off.