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The Partners

Who is on the cap table is who answers the email.

There is a particular tell in early-stage biotech: when a founder calls the fund and a partner picks up, it usually means the cap-table seat was the point. Five partners read the rounds at Taiho Ventures. Three of them spent a decade or more on the R&D bench at Taiho Pharmaceutical before joining the fund; the founder ran Astellas’s US venture arm and a decade at Yasuda Enterprise before that. The bios below are the people, the years, the work.

Volume X · Contributors

Plate 05 / 164:5 · duotone portraitPortrait pending
Plate 05Joined 2016
Partner · 2016

Sakae Asanuma CFA, MBA

President & CEO

Sakae Asanuma established Taiho Ventures as the founding President in 2016. Before that he served as President and CEO at Astellas Venture Management and as US Head of Astellas Innovation Management from 2011 to 2015. From 2000 to 2011 he was at Yasuda Enterprise, a Japan/US-based venture firm. Across those years he has taken positions in more than sixty biotech companies, the majority of which exited via IPO or M&A. At Taiho Ventures and Astellas he executed numerous research-collaboration deals with academia and biotech ventures, including several build-to-buy and spin-out initiatives.

Partner · 2016

Seiji Miyahara PhD

Partner & Senior Investment Director

Seiji Miyahara is Partner & Senior Investment Director at Taiho Ventures, with eighteen years in the life sciences across research and development, company creation, and venture investing in a range of modalities. He joined the fund at founding in 2016 and has served as board director or observer at multiple Taiho portfolio companies. Before the fund he spent twelve years at Taiho Pharmaceutical, primarily in oncology, advancing programs to the clinical stage. PhD in Life Science, Hokkaido University.

Plate 06 / 164:5 · duotone portraitPortrait pending
Plate 06Joined 2016
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Plate 07Joined 2019
Partner · 2019

Takaaki Ishii

Senior Investment Director

Takaaki Ishii, a trained molecular biologist, joined Taiho Ventures in 2019. He brings more than eleven years in oncology — early-stage clinical development, product-portfolio strategy, and scientific evaluation for in-house and partnering programs across a range of cancer types. At Taiho Pharmaceutical he led the in-licensing of AB928 (A2aR/A2bR dual antagonist) from Arcus Biosciences and served a key role in medical and Medical Science Liaison activities for nab-paclitaxel (ABRAXANE®) and pembrolizumab (KEYTRUDA®) in Japan.

Partner · 2022

Hidefumi Kasuga PhD

Investment Director

Hidefumi Kasuga joined Taiho Ventures in 2022 from a career in oncology drug discovery and development. Before the fund he spent nine years at Taiho Pharmaceutical, specializing in compounds targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and advancing oncology candidates through preclinical work. PhD in Pharmaceutical Science, University of Tokyo, 2013.

Plate 08 / 164:5 · duotone portraitPortrait pending
Plate 08Joined 2022
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Plate 09Joined 2024
Partner · 2024

Takayuki Hirano PhD

Associate Investment Director

Takayuki Hirano joined Taiho Ventures in 2024 with fifteen years in non-clinical drug development — toxicological evaluation of drug candidates during discovery and pre-clinical phases, and non-clinical project management. As a lead toxicological scientist he contributed to the global development of oncology compounds, including IND submissions and support for clinical trials. PhD in Engineering, Tokushima University.

A note on the founding

Taiho Ventures opened in Menlo Park in 2016 with four people on the payroll. The founder, Sakae Asanuma, had run Astellas Venture Management before that and Yasuda Enterprise before that — two careers spent making a Japanese pharmaceutical company legible to a US founder, and a US founder legible to a Japanese pharmaceutical company. The four-person team began deploying capital from Taiho Pharmaceutical’s first venture fund into oncology syndicates already crowded with ARCH, GV, MPM. What they added — and what they are still adding — was the cap-table credibility of a $400M Japanese specialty pharmaceutical company.

Contact

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