Message from the Executive Director (Research)

Message from the Executive Director (Research)

Welcome to this page.

I am Akinori Kimura, the Executive Director and Vice President in charge of research. Here, I will introduce research at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU).

Our university is a national university with two faculties, Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Dentistry, two graduate schools, Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences and Graduate School of Health Care Sciences, and two research institutes, Institute of Biomaterials and Bioengineering and Medical Research Institute, along with several research centers.
In 2013, TMDU was adopted as the program for promoting the enhancement of research universities by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), together with 18 other universities in Japan, and thereafter TMDU has established a system to strengthen research capabilities. Specifically, as shown in this figure, we have established two Institutes, one is the Institute of Research and the other is the Institute of Innovation Promotion.
The Institute of Research has implemented research support, promoted advanced multidisciplinary research in the biomedical field, and enhanced research in the priority area such as organ and tissue regeneration. On the other hand, the Institute of Innovation Promotion launched in 2020 has focused on collaborative research with industry, academia, and government by co-operating with the Institute of Open Innovation. Using these systems, we are now developing various methods and technologies in the medical, dentistry, biological, and engineering fields as a system to promote both basic and clinical research.
The topics of research in TMDU are disseminated both domestically and internationally. Of particular note was an English press release by Professor Takanori Takebe, who belongs to the Institute of Research. His group has developed a risk assessment system for drug-induced liver injury by using iPS cell-derived liver organoids, as reported in the Nature Medicine.
In addition, we established the M&D Data Science Center and invited Professor Satoru Miyano, a top runner of medical data science, as the director of the center, engaging for promotion of biomedical research based on multidimensional information to strengthen the data science research in the field of medicine and dentistry.
We are currently facing the global epidemic of SARS-CoV-2 infection and are accepting many COVID-19 patients at our university hospital. At the same time, both basic and clinical research to overcome COVID-19 is underway. At present, over 80 projects are in progress. In addition to research related to the development of diagnosis and treatment for COVID-19 as individual research, several teams are participating in nation-wide clinical research such as therapeutic trials and COVID-19 sequelae research. As well, TMDU researchers have participated as leading members in a nation-wide collaborative research, so-called Joint Research Coronavirus Task Force, to elucidate the genetic factors related to the COVID-19 pathogenesis. The task force has also developed international joint research in collaboration with the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, an international consortium.
Under these backgrounds, TMDU will set up an infectious disease platform and will promote both clinical and basic research to overcome or control various infectious diseases including COVID-19.

Lastly, TMDU will be a Designated National University from the fiscal year of 2022. We will continue to strengthen our research capabilities toward the realization of Total Healthcare in both nation-wide and world-wide scale.

Thank you for your attention.