COMPANY

Over my twenty year career since joining TEIJIN LIMITED and working on researching pharmaceuticals, I have been fortunate enough to have an excellent research environment and outstanding colleagues. Yet there was always a vague question in the back of my mind. It goes without saying that developing new pharmaceuticals is an amazing opportunity, and we will likely soon eradicate cancer. However, even with the advent of cutting-edge drugs, many issues remain unresolved in this era of a super-aged society -- such as the growing costs of nursing and medical care. Japan is faced with a looming sense of unease at how to tackle this problem. With the coming age of people living to 100 and beyond, that means that we will have some forty years ahead of us post-retirement; and in our final ten years of life, nursing is an eventuality. That is why we therefore feel the need to discuss and tease out new solutions to what it truly means to be healthy of body and mind in this day and age. NOMON's focus is thus on exploring ways of respecting people's fundamental right to lead fulfilling lives from start to finish.

We found ourselves asking a key question: Are there nutrients and foods that would have the same beneficial effects as medicine? In other words, something close to the ancient Japanese concept of a balanced diet leading to good health.
Our thinking was that, by drawing on the vast body of knowledge on food that mankind has developed so far, if we can use clear evidence based on cutting-edge scientific modalities to find foods that are beneficial for health, it would allow for preventive treatment in the context of our everyday lives, and in turn resolve issues associated with medical costs and nursing. This was the origin of NOMON.

In the Age of Exploration, scurvy was a deadly disease that it was discovered only later, in the 18th century, could be prevented by consuming oranges and limes. However, it was only in the 20th century that the mechanism behind this was understood to be Vitamin C. It took 200 years of progress to reach that point. Today's science and technology have succeeded in compressing the speed of progress from 200 years down to just a few years of research. And today, we have entered an era in which our lifespans reach and exceed 100 years of age. A growing lifespan means more ways of enjoying a long life, but it also means facing the realities of the aging process. Our focus comes down to the idea of finding something, like Vitamin C described in the above example, that would help curb the effects of aging. We asked ourselves whether there might be some substance within the body that declines with age, but that could be supplemented in order to support better health. We scrutinized the results of the latest scientific research and concluded that nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) could be one candidate. In 2016, a paper was published reporting findings that indicated that NMN was effective when used on aged mice. Today, we are conducting trials into its effectiveness in humans. In this way, we at NOMON consider it our mission to put the results of cutting-edge research into practice as soon as possible in order to aid people everywhere. Our focus is not simply on picking up the latest scientific data or technology, but remaining steadfast in using it towards a singular goal. We consider technological advances to be not simply something that bring convenience, but that must be put to use for people's health and wellbeing. In this way, NOMON is applying the latest scientific outcomes towards resolving frailty, dementia, and sleep disorders.

With the goal of "supporting people's lives from birth through their final days," NOMON will tackle the challenges of resolving growing medical costs, the gap between healthy life expectancy and full life expectancy, and other issues facing a super-aged society. As a first step toward this, we will engage in the provision of nutraceuticals, food products which have been scientifically shown to help maintain health. Considering aging positively, NOMON will value the concept of "productive aging" by which all people live out their lives in their own way as they age, connected as much as possible to everything around them. We hope to work step by step toward this end, together with people in industry and academia and across national boundaries.

Everything we do is so people can happily say “Life is long”.