Case Study: Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma achieves 4× faster algorithm development and 75% faster analysis with MathWorks MATLAB and consulting

Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Develops Data Analysis Tools to Speed Drug Discovery

Mitsubishi faced a slow, error‑prone drug candidate selection process in DMPK, pharmacology, and toxicology studies caused by fragmented, manual data analysis and a gap between data scientists and bench biologists. To address this, they worked with MathWorks, using MATLAB and toolboxes (Image Processing Toolbox, Bioinformatics Toolbox, Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox) and MathWorks Consulting Services to streamline algorithm development and deployment.

MathWorks consultants helped convert MATLAB algorithms for image segmentation, object tracking, and data matching into standalone applications via MATLAB Compiler so bench scientists could run reproducible analyses without coding. The MathWorks‑based solution cut algorithm development time fourfold, reduced analysis time by 75% (from ~12 hours to ~2.5 hours), lowered deployment workload by 83%, and enabled Mitsubishi to double annual feasibility studies and identify at least one promising drug candidate.

Mitsubishi

Ryuta Saito

Research Scientist on Bioinformatics