Dr. Zhiqiu Man earned her PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Kyoto University in 2012. Driven by her passion to create innovative medicines that benefit society, she joined Sumitomo Pharma Co., Ltd. in April 2012. From her first year at the company, she led multiple first-in-class (FIC) drug discovery projects targeting neurodegenerative diseases and rare genetic disorders. She actively utilized cutting-edge technologies, including iPS cell platforms and nucleic acid therapeutics, gaining comprehensive experience from hit identification through lead generation. In her first year, she initiated an ALS drug discovery project by designing a novel inhibitor, which advanced from exploratory research to lead generation. From 2015, she served as project leader for iPS cell-based drug discovery for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, successfully identifying several promising lead compounds and advancing early research. She also established foundational iPS-based technologies, such as 3D brain organoid differentiation and neuromuscular junction modeling. From October 2017 to January 2020, she conducted research at the Salk Institute in the United States as a visiting scientist, focusing on patient-derived iPS cell disease modeling and phenotypic analysis for multiple sclerosis. The results of this research have been published. After returning to Japan in 2020, she launched a nucleic acid drug discovery project for rare genetic diseases and identified a clinical candidate molecule, for which an international patent application has been filed (International Application No. WO2022/250155). She is also developing novel therapeutics for multiple system atrophy (MSA) using patient-derived iPS cells. Since February 2025, she has been conducting research on regenerative medicine applications at RACTHERA Co., Ltd.