Chika YOSHINAGA
Dr. Yoshinaga was born and educated in China. Dr. Yoshinaga started her venture capital career at NIF SMBC Ventures Co, Ltd, the second largest VC firm in Japan, where she headed the European life sciences area and directed equity investments in a number of firms that achieved successful exits. From there she moved to Sofinnova Partners, one of the largest and oldest European venture capital firms, to become Chief Representative of their Shanghai office where she set strategy for investing in China-based firms, including development-stage, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies. After that, Dr. Yoshinaga returned to Japan to work for Quintiles (IQVIA) in a new ventures capacity, responsible for identifying equity investments and M&A transactions to drive growth of the core business in Japan and China.
She has developed a broad network of contacts at Chinese, Japanese and European companies to facilitate successful collaborations. Dr. Yoshinaga has acquired a deep knowledge and understanding of the Chinese healthcare market, including the R&D, regulatory and commercial environments.
Before launching Asajes Ventures, she was an independent consultant and dedicated to providing regulatory, clinical, business development as well as financing advice to western small to mid-sized companies seeking to enter China and Japan markets. Her successful achievements include supporting a U.S. company to submit a drug master file in China, a European company to license their product to a major Chinese pharmaceutical company, a European biotech to form an advisory board in Japan including clinical and regulatory experts, as well as an Australian company to out-license to a Japan-based multi-national - company, etc.
Dr. Yoshinaga earned her M.D. degree from Shanghai (China) Medical University and Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at Yokohama (Japan) National University. Dr. Yoshinaga speaks fluent Chinese, Japanese and English.