Minoru Tanaka

Over 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry as a medicinal chemist / chemical biologist, working for Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation. I have led several interdisciplinary teams of scientists on innovative and challenging projects, covering diverse therapeutic areas, target classes, and modalities. My expertise covers wide range of cutting-edge medicinal chemistry and chemical biology, including structure-based drug design, phenotypic drug discovery, DNA-encoded library (DEL), and targeted protein degradation (TPD). From November 2013 to 2015, I belonged to James E. Bradner Laboratory at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute as a visiting scientist to discover several epigenetics-related protein inhibitors which have a novel mechanism of action, exemplified by a bivalent BET inhibitor, MT1. I also engaged in developing TPD technology and take an initiative in launching innovative drug discovery projects at Mitsubishi Tanabe using TPD and DEL as a director. In 2019, I launched a consortium consisting of 9 pharmaceutical companies to establish modality platforms for TPD and have taken an initiative to lead the consortium as a chairperson of the council.