Kyowa Kirin research

Hi, my name is Arvin Tam.  I'm a senior scientist and I'm the head of the molecular biology group here at the research department, Kyowa Kirin. 

Ever since I was young, I think I wanted to be a scientist. 

I love science, I have a have a passion for science. I also have a passion for helping people.

Being in the Pharmaceutical industry, I'm able to do both, apply kind of my passion in science and use the latest technologies to help bring cures to patients.

The reason why I was drawn to Kyowa Kirin was because of the people. I saw the teamwork that that was present in the research team here.

The people who are here have been here for a while, which is very rare for a pharmaceutical company.

And you can feel the teamwork and the way people help each other.

A lot of scientists here do great science with very different backgrounds.

And so being able to come together as a team and put everyone's knowledge to work to, to find a cure is great.

And it's also nice to have everyone be very patient focused.

Having everyone kind of put patients first when trying to design cures or trying to design a therapy, it's very exciting.

The reason why I do science is, is to be able to help people. And you can feel that everyone here has the same kind of passion.

One opportunity that's here at Kyowa Kirin in research, we are open to all kind of modalities.

We've worked with antibodies before, small molecule cell and gene therapy, and so being able to think about and work on different types of modalities are very, very exciting for scientists.

Using the latest technologies, we're able to almost do anything that we want to try and develop a cure. 

I joined Kyowa Kirin back in 2001 as an entry level scientist straight from my postdoctoral fellowship.

And over the last 20, almost 23 years, I've been able to develop my career and expand my responsibilities.

I started as a project leader on an early drug discovery project for autoimmune disease indication, and as time went by, I would increase my responsibilities, leading a small team, aim for pipeline projects and then eventually overseeing the research, being responsible for our pipeline and our full portfolio.

I was one of those kids who was interested in science. From very early on, probably elementary school or early junior high, I had a high interest in science.

Within two years of each other, my grandmother was diagnosed with uterine cancer and my mother with myelofibrosis.

And so that just pushed me even more to understand what was happening with them and what treatments were available.

And back then there was almost nothing. That desire to help patients and understand, find treatments or cures or causes of disease drove me into this profession.

Ideas can come from anywhere.  So whether it's an entry level research associate, to a scientist with 20 years experience, I want to hear their ideas and, and we try to create an environment where everyone can speak up and provide ideas from the science to the project to how to make this a better place to work.

But what has been consistent, especially with our side in La Jolla is the teamwork and collaborative spirit and the recognition that we're stronger when we work together.

And so we haven't been siloed and we are always open to new ideas and working with individuals and, and we take that out and bring that culture to our collaborations and interactions with the teams in New Jersey as well as with our colleagues in Japan.

As we're looking towards where the next products are, the next early-stage projects are, we are focusing more on the rare diseases. There are a lot of unmet needs for those patients because they're rare, they're not studied as much. We don't understand the biology.  And so they, they represent a need for patients in an area that we can focus on. 

I learned something new everyday. I'm challenged everyday and that helps our, our process and our, our work here.

And then it, it goes back to the culture and the people and the collaboration. And so being able to walk down the hall and ask someone a question and have a quick chat about the latest research, the latest results from an experiment and what it means for our projects and how to advance that.

My name is Josh Oakes. I am a research scientist, and I am part of our newly formed cell therapy group.

I actually started my career as a dietitian. Part of being a dietitian, you have to do an internship where you basically work in the hospital and you follow a registered dietitian. Part of this involves working in the intensive care units. It became clear to me that a lot of our available treatments were not adequate.

I decided that I would like to improve the drugs that we can give to patients and that's why I joined a PhD program to work in the pharmaceutical sciences.

I was actually interviewing a few companies when I was recruited here, and my interview here was remarkably pleasant.  All of the people were, they asked good questions. They were tough questions.

Since joining here, it's definitely met my expectations as far as people not just willing to work together, but they'd like to work together. They want to help you succeed, which I think is terrific.

After graduating from my PhD, I did two postdocs academic, and then I actually worked at two startups before.  
When compared to a startup, we look at different diseases. We have a choice of modalities. In the startup environment, it's usually very focused, so you're targeting just one disease. You usually have one or two drugs.  
Here we have the opportunity to look at different diseases wherever the patients need the therapeutic.

A lot of other companies it's, you know, it's just one thing and if it doesn't pan out, then it's just no go.

One of the big highlights while working at Kyowa Kirin is actually part of my antibody discovery project.  We needed an antibody that had a specific property.

We weren't sure if it was even possible and it turns out not only is it possible, but it works great. I was really happy about that.

My name is Quy Nguyen and I'm a Senior Research Associate 2 at the research site here in La Jolla, CA. I am working in the cellular immunology group.

I got my bachelor's in cell in molecular biology at UC San Diego, just around next door here.

I was kind of looking into what kind of job, what am I going to do after I graduate?

So I landed at the Sanford Brown Premise Research Institute and I was in a lab working on, you know, viruses like HIV, flu,  Zika, so in a disease space.

And so that was something I was really interested in because you know, when you're young, you want to have an impact on the world. You want to change the world, right?

I actually continued working at that same Research Institute and that same laboratory. You know, there's kind of a difference in academic research versus pharmaceutical research.

In academic research, it's knowledge to gain knowledge. Their main goal is to, you know, publish papers and high tier journals and just add to the broader knowledge of, you know, science, cell biology, you know, etcetera, etcetera.

Because I wanted to get into pharmaceutical research, because I wanted to, well, for one, I wanted to have a direct impact on patients’ lives, right?

I wanted to work on a drug that it would eventually make it to commercialization. And so in order to do that, it had to go to pharma.

This is actually my first pharma job, so I have been here for the last eight years or so.

I think it's important to note that with this new cell gene therapy initiative, cell gene apparently is a really hot new area and a lot of different, other, different companies are, are getting into this space.

It's important for us to be there by getting into the cell gene therapy space, we are on the the cutting edge of technology, right?  We are keeping up with our competitors.

I would say this culture here, this company is so unique. It #1 is a very welcoming and inclusive environment. And I would say highly collaborative as well.

We're, you know, we're always collaborating.

We're always ready to help each other out and we're always ready to uplift each other.

It's just a really great environment to work in.

This is a great place to work because not only are we like highly collaborative, the executive committee is very invested in employee development.

And, so you know there is just so many opportunities to like move up to develop yourself as you know just as an individual.

Their contributions to our collaboration have been invaluable.