Our Story
Takaha Pharma Inc., a small clinical-stage drug development company, was incorporated in Feb 14, 2017 in Tokyo as a 100% subsidiary of StaGen Co., Ltd (http://www.stagen.co.jp/). The company founder, Naoyuki Kamatani, MD, PhD is an expert in genetic and clinical data analyses as well as drug development. Among numerous publications, he has authored 34 Nature and Nature Genetics papers. Based on that expertise, he has developed combination drugs with XOR inhibitors and hypoxanthine resources to enhance cellular ATP (energy) for treating various diseases related to energy dysfunction, including mitochondrial disease, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. StaGen’s patents, already granted in US, China, Japan and other countries, cover at least 9 different combination drugs. StaGen has performed clinical studies using one of them, a combination of febuxostat and inosine (SGC01) on Parkinson’s disease (n=26) and mitochondrial disease (n=2), and obtained promising results. Takaha Pharma is now raising capital to perform additional clinical trials. In the future, Takaha Pharma also aims to develop drugs to suppress aging (anti-aging drug) and elongate the life span.
Our vision
Our company aims to develop ATP (energy) enhancing drugs which cover a wide range of diseases such as mitochondrial disease, genetic deficiencies of glycolytic enzymes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cerebrovascular disease, cardiovascular disease, liver diseases, kidney diseases and others.
The biggest history
With the Big Bang, “things” and “energy” were created, but life did not arise until 4 billion years ago, when genes, which are “information”, appeared.
Maintenance of low entropy, the order
To maintain the life, an internal “order” is essential, and, to maintain the order, three elements are necessary, i.e. “things”, “energy” and “information”.
The Maxwell’s Demon’s model teaches us that things, energy and information are necessary to decrease the “entropy”, i.e. disorder.
Energy related items occupy about 10% in various fields
Among the three elements, things (molecules) and information (genes) have been emphasized in medicine; however, the importance of energy (ATP) has been rather ignored.
- “Energy-related items” account for ~10% of industry, weight, genes, etc.
- However, no energy-related diseases are known in common diseases.
- We hypothesized that Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases are caused by energy depletion and an effective treatment is energy enhancement.
- We predict that ATP (energy) enhancers are effective in about 10% of all human diseases.
We predict that ATP depletion is related to about 10% of all human diseases
These data strongly suggest that about 10% of all human diseases are also energy-related.
XOR inhibitors are effective and a combination of XOR inhibitor and hypoxanthine resource is even more effective to enhance ATP
By use of sophisticated gene analysis technologies, we found that XOR inhibition leads to an ATP enhancement, and the combination of an XOR inhibitor and a hypoxanthine resource leads to further efficacy with less side effects.
By clinical studies, we showed that a combination of febuxostat, an XOR inhibitor, and inosine, a hypoxanthine resource, is better than febuxostat alone in both efficacy and safety. Based on the results, we applied for patents for combination drugs of XOR inhibitors and hypoxanthine resources to enhance ATP, and they have been granted in the US, Japan, China and other countries.
Clinical data that XOR inhibitors improve various common diseases including Alzheimer’s disease are being reported one after another
Recently, papers describing the improvement of Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, a liver disease and a kidney disease by XOR inhibitors have been reported one after another.
For example, two big data analyses have shown that febuxostat is effective in suppressing the incidence of dementia including Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia.
Why is the coverage of our drugs so wide?
Our patents cover at least 9 combinations of XOR inhibitors and hypoxanthine resources, and target diseases are about 10% of all human diseases including mitochondrial disease, genetic deficiencies of glycolytic enzymes, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, cerebrovascular disease, cardiovascular disease, liver diseases, kidney diseases and others.
The reason for such a wide coverage is because the concept of “energy” is very large. It is just like steroid that suppresses “inflammation and immunity” and covers a wide range of diseases. It is because the concept of “inflammation and immunity” is large; however, the concept of “energy” is even larger.