Chika Yoshinaga

Chika Yoshinaga, MD, is a venture capital, pharmaceutical business development and operations expert in Japan and China. With over two decades of cross-border industry experience, she has built a deep understanding of Chinese and Japanese healthcare markets, including the regulatory, clinical and commercial as well as financial environments. Her broad network of contacts at Asian and European companies has also been instrumental in successfully facilitating cross-border company transactions.

Dr Yoshinaga is the founder of Asajes Ventures. Asajes Ventures provides financing as well as local operational support including regulatory, clinical, and business development to western biotech companies to speed up innovative product development in a more time and cost effective way in Japan and China, the two key markets in Asia.

Prior to launching Asajes Ventures, Dr Yoshinaga worked as an independent consultant to provide Asian market entry advice to western companies. Before that, she worked as head of Corporate Development in Japan and China for Quintiles (IQVIA), responsible for inorganic growth including M&A in these markets.

She previously worked for one of the largest European venture capital firms, Sofinnova Partners, as VP Asia, Chief Representative in China. She 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 biotech companies that achieved successful exits.

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.