Chapter 2: Focusing on Eye Drops
Due to air strikes during The Second World War, the Head Office, the Koraibashi
Plant, the Nakazakicho Plant, and the Sakuragawa Plant in Osaka burned down,
causing a time of great hardship. The determination and foresight to focus
on eye drops and concentrate business resources in this area helped the
Company out of its difficulties.
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1945
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Inside the Yodogawa
Plant in the 1940s |
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Head Office moved to the Yodogawa Plant site
Following its destruction in the war, the Head Office
was moved to its current location at the Yodogawa Plant site. In the same
year, the company name was changed to Santendo Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
to make its business domain clear. For some time after the war, Santen suffered
hardships including a reduction in its workforce.
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1952
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Daigaku Super Eye Drops |
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Launch of a business strategy focusing on eye drops for corporate reconstruction
Daigaku
Penicillin Eye Drops
,
Daigaku Mycillin Eye Drops
, and
Daigaku
Super Eye Drops
were launched in 1952, 1953, and 1954, respectively.
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1958
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Entry into the prescription pharmaceuticals business
In 1958, the Company changed its name to the present
Santen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. In 1962, Santen acquired the domestic marketing
rights for the mydriatic
Midorin-P
(generic name: tropicamide) from
the Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche.
Midorin-P
, an innovative
mydriatic drug (dilating drops), contributed to the advancement of ophthalmic
surgery and diagnosis and helped the Company to gain a good reputation in
the field of prescription ophthalmic pharmaceuticals.
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1962
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Super Sante |
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The launch of Super Sante marked the introduction of Japan's first plastic eye drop container
Until
1962, eye drops were packaged in glass containers. In addition to their
high production cost due to the difficulty of mass-producing these handmade
containers, they also had the drawback of occasional breakage.
Super
Sante
, featuring Japan's first plastic eye drop container, was easy
to carry and to administer, and gained ready acceptance among consumers.
With the introduction of this new container, eye drops rapidly gained popularity
in Japan.
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| 1963 |
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Thiola , an original antidote for liver treatment, launched in Japan
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1970
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Antibiotic ophthalmic Ecolicin launched in Japan
This innovative product showed excellent anti-bacterial
effects on
Pseudomonas aeruginosa
. From this start, Santen established
a solid foundation in the field of anti-infective ophthalmic pharmaceuticals.
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| 1975 |
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Anti-inflammatory ophthalmic Flumetholon launched in Japan
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| 1977 |
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Listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Osaka Securities Exchange
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Paid-in capital was increased
to 1,102 million yen, and net sales of 9,000 million yen were recorded for
the fiscal year.
In the same year, Santen introduced a "bottle pack" production system, developed
by Rommelag, a West German company. This enabled concurrent container molding
and solution filling. Santen thus became the first company to produce bottle
packed eye drops in Japan.
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