Kentaro Shibusawa, Ph.D.,

Role and Responsibility

• Drive commercial activities for the company's Cell and Viral Gene Therapy businesses by advancing our market presence in the Asia Pacific region (excluding China). Focus on Japan, but also South Korea and Singapore.
• Responsible for assessing the market landscape, target customers seeking to streamline their Cell and Gene Therapy therapeutic programs, and drive complex product and service contracting activities throughout the adaption lifecycle of the therapeutic program.
• Responsible for the company's continued market entry for our growing product and service business, building territory plans, identifying target customers in line with the business goals, ensuring applicability of marketing tactics for the territory.
• Representing the Carlsbad Viral Vector manufacturing business to viral vector customers, incl. but not limited to manufacturing options, viral vector producer lines (VirusExpress™) and manufacturing templates, testing services etc.
• Supporting the wider Merck commercial team on sales and cross-sales activities including being the main point of contact for all Cell and Gene Therapy inquiries in the APAC region, training of local sales teams, and supporting technical and commercial negotiations.

Achievement

• 2024: Sales XX EUR (XX% of the previous year, vs target XX%).
• 2023: Sales XX EUR (XX% of the previous year, vs target XX%).
• 2022: Sales XX EUR (XX% of the previous year, vs target XX%).

Role and Responsibility

• As part of the commercial team for the centrifuge business, responsible for marketing and product management.
• Create mid-to-long term product roadmap, market forecast, market share and sales forecast for the company's products. Manage the lifecycle of the products in charge (lead the creation and implementation of new product launch plans and product discontinue plans).
• Market analysis (market size, market share, sales trends, customer needs, competitive activities, etc.). Set prices consistent with product strategy, monitor average selling prices and take necessary actions.
• Lead inter-departmental collaboration as product manager to achieve goals (sales, applications, services, RA/QA, logistics, legal, IT, etc.).Collaborate with relevant departments and escalate product complaints to resolve the situation.
• Communicate closely with global teams to ensure effective implementation and deployment of global strategies in Japan. Based on customer requests, make requests to global teams to reflect customer needs in products.
• Work with commercial marketing team to maximize deal leads using digital marketing tools.

Achievement

• 2020: Sales 880 million yen (131% of the previous year, vs target 138%).
• 2019: Sales 670 million yen (135% of the previous year, vs target 115%).

Role and Responsibility

• As a project leader or member, I have been engaged in 10~ projects mainly in health care field.
• The projects covered a wide range of topics, including support for the formulation of sales and R&D strategies, business continuity planning, and support for the establishment of regional medical care, disaster medical care, and emergency medical care systems.
• Develop potential clients for project proposals. Research and preparation of materials for project proposals. Sales activities of the project to potential clients.
• Project execution and budget management. Meeting with clients to discuss progress and control expectations. Preparation of project deliverables and reporting to the client.

Role and Responsibility- Volunteering in industry associations

• Promoting activities centering on the creation of the industry standard "FIRM standard" with the aim of developing and revitalizing edge industrial value chains in regenerative medicine

Role and Responsibility

• As part of the commercial team in the biopharmaceutical business, lead the quality control applications business
• Achieve business goal by management of one sales person, one person in charge of marketing, one person in charge of application.
• Formulation of sales plan, setting of sales / target and planning of sales strategy. Collecting, managing and analyzing sales data through collaboration with Finance Department. Five-year planning and implementation of business, progress management.
• Preparation of presentation materials (report on sales trends and competitive information) for upper part (President of Japan corporation and President of Asia Pacific region) and report.
• Organizational structure planning, personnel allocation. Selection and recruitment of new staff, education (1 person in charge of application: from March 2016 ~).

Achievement

• 2016: Sales 270 million yen (166% of the previous year, vs target 117%).

Role and Responsibility

• As part of the commercial team in the biopharmaceutical business, responsible for quality control application support.
• Pre-sales and after sales in product implementation. Hands-on training of customers, troubleshooting support. GMP / GCTP and validation consulting for customers.
• Approach to potential customers (Presentation at technology exhibition). In charge of lecturers for workshops/seminars (Internal/External).
• Collaboration with sales representatives, sales, marketing, quality assurance personnel, in-house global staff, etc. for customer support. Participate in the development of new analytical methods for microbial analysis.
• Participate in industrialization of regenerative medicine by industry-academia-government collaboration.

Role and Responsibility

• Research and development of new vaccines such as lentivirus vector against emerging and reemerging virus infectious diseases.