The Overview of Japanese CRO Market

This report presents an overview of the CRO (contract research organization) market in Japan. By reading this report, end-users will gain an overall picture of the Japanese CRO market, including the market size trend, major CRO players, and competitive difference between local and global CROs.

Japanese CRO market has been expanding for the past 10 years, and it reached a total size of ¥133 billion in 2012. When broken down by service, monitoring accounted for 54% of total and followed by data management and statistical analysis with 23%. 

Japanese pharmaceutical firms traditionally used to have a strong tendency to do clinical trial works in-house. However, with large-scale new drug development becoming difficult in recent years, keeping many staff in clinical development area has become an operational risk. As a result, it has been now common to see that both foreign and domestic firms in Japan utilize CROs for their clinical development works.

While there are approximately 50 CROs in this market, the largest 4 companies, EPS, CMIC, Quintiles, and Parexel, are dominating the market, and the rest of firms have faced stagnation or decreasing number of projects. There are several factors behind this. 

Clearly, Japanese CROs get local projects, and global CROs take global studies. Japanese CROs leverage their low cost and ability to interact with clients in Japanese, to get domestic studies. On the other hand, global CROs, takes advantage of their capability in international studies and global reach. 
In this situation, large Japanese CROs have been trying to expand the operation in Asia, to get multinational studies. Also, some CROs such as CMIC are moving into horizontal business expansion; CSO, CMO etc., positioning themselves as one-stop service provider for entire pharmaceutical business. 

Large foreign-owned CROs are strengthening regional capability, investing facilities and resources in functional services such as central laboratories, imaging, clinical supply and so on, to take domestic projects away from local CROs. 

Demand for outsourcing clinical development works has remained strong. Therefore, Japanese CRO market will likely continue to grow for a while. More concentration into the top 4 companies is also expected in the near future. The environment surrounding small- and mid-sized CROs will become difficult more and more over the time. The key to success for them to survive this tough market would be securing quality operational staff that can satisfy clients' needs. 

Key Topics Covered: 

1. Summary 

2. Definition of CRO market 

3. Market size 

4. Rational necessity for pharma to use CRO 

5. Industry Association 

6. Major CRO companies 

7. Market trend 

8. Future outlook 

Companies Mentioned:

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Media Contact: Laura Wood , +353-1-481-1716, [email protected]