GCV Powerlist 2016: Graeme Martin, Takeda Pharmaceutical

Graeme Martin has been president and chief executive of Japan-based pharmaceutical company Takeda’s corporate venturing unit since 2005, having joined in 2003 just as it was taking flight.

He came to Takeda with close to 30 years of pharma R&D experience, initially with Wellcome Research Laboratories – where he honed his approach to drug discovery under the tutelage of Sir James Black – then subsequently with GlaxoWellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline) before moving to the US to join Switzerland-based drugs peer F Hoffmann-La Roche in Palo Alto, California. He has also enjoyed stints in biotech and as an independent consultant.


Takeda Ventures has now invested in more than 30 companies, seven of which have been acquired – including by Takeda – and five floated on public markets. The team aims to maintain a strategically active portfolio of 15 to 18 companies, leveraging the ability to play long with an evergreen funding structure.

Last year, together with co-investors Novartis Venture Fund, the team exited UK-based GPCR drug company Heptares Therapeutics when it was acquired by Sosei Group in a deal worth up to $400m. A few months later, Allergan acquired Takeda-backed Naurex for $560m. With four other exits to the public markets, the Takeda team has been busy replenishing its portfolio, with new investments in North America and Europe that have included Brussels-based Univercells, and US west coast-based Presage Biosciences, Bioniz, Orphomed and Cortexyme.

For his GCV Powerlist 2016 award, Martin said: “We have now seen a complete cycle in the life sciences capital markets that has driven therapeutic innovation forward in an amazing way. The challenge is now to keep pace with the breadth of strategic opportunity both in front of us, and that we wish to be involved in creating.

“Measures of strategic value are tough to quantify in the near term, since the value realisation from corporate venturing has the same timecourse as bringing any new drug to patients. However, we have now been operating long enough to demonstrate that even with a purely strategic approach to investing, we are returning significantly more to treasury than we withdraw, including our operating costs. That is pretty efficient use of capital for any R&D organisation.

”The soft value comes on top of this – a 10-times leverage of third-party dollars, a ringside seat on innovation as it emerges and access to opportunity before it is in the public domain. Why many pharma groups continue to tinker with under resourced venture initiatives and question its value is a perpetual mystery to me.”

To further these insights, this year Martin said the venture team would be looking for “deeper, more direct engagement with innovation at the concept stage”.