The morbidity of patients with the allergic diseases is now reaching almost one third of the total Japanese population. It has also been reported that more than 200 million people suffered from these diseases in the advanced nations. Further, several kinds of cancer still have high mortality rates and there are many patients suffering from intractable immunological diseases including autoimmune diseases. It is evident that establishment of safe immunoregulation technologies is required for the development of organ transplantation and regenerative medicine, which are expected to be medical cures of the next generation. Some of the critical processes for the drug development in the Japanese pharmaceutical industry still remain at a bottleneck, including discovery and identification of the novel target molecule for the drug discovery, rational drug design and synthesis, compound conversion technology, validation procedures for drug candidates in medical applications, technology to evaluate the advantages of biological drugs, and efficient translational research. In order to overcome these fundamental issues and discover new drugs to cure above severe diseases, the Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University is starting to develop innovative “immunoregulative drugs and technologies” by co-researching with one of the biggest Japanese pharmaceutical companies Astellas Pharma Inc. Kyoto University and Astellas will work jointly to achieve the break-through innovations in drug discovery system and innovative drugs of the next generation.

This innovation center has been adopted to the program, “Formation of Innovation Center for Fusion of Advanced Technologies,” funded by the Japanese Science and Technology Agency (JST) under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

Kyoto University/Canon Joint Research Project (CK Project) is a joint project between Kyoto University and Canon for promoting close industry-academia collaboration to foster researchers and technicians who can effectively work in the integrated medical engineering fields and achieve advanced interdisciplinary innovations especially in the fields of diagnostic imaging technology for early detection and prevention of diseases in order to create a healthy society.

It has been adopted under the name “Innovative Techno-hub for Integrated Medical Bio-imaging” as part of the “Creation of innovation centers for advanced interdisciplinary research areas program” supported by the MEXT Budget for the Promotion of Science and Technology. Its purpose is to support industry-academia collaborative research and development in the field of interdisciplinary medicine and engineering. To produce advanced technologies that can lead to creation of new industries over the long-term, the project is carried out on a 10-year plan from basic research to commercial applications.

Many teaching staff members of the departments in the School of Human Health Science have been involved in the CK Project since the time of its foundation. Especially, MRI and ultrasound laboratories in the basement operate as the research center in Yoshida Campus and have played active roles in important challenges, such as the development of next-generation diagnostic ultrasound imaging devices, advanced diagnostic imaging support systems, and other original elemental technologies. As a result, the CK Project was selected as one of the four projects in Japan to continue its research after the review on the third year, so as to further proceed with research and development.

In addition to pursuing research results, the CK Project is also expected to facilitate organizational reforms and system reforms concerning education and research at Kyoto University. With regard to education, Advanced Medicine Engineering Research Unit was established (in 2007) as a multi-faculty organization for fostering multilingual experts in engineering, medicine and informatics. Furthermore, the Graduate School of Engineering’s integrated biomedical engineering course (2008) and the Graduate School of Medicine’s medical engineering informatics joint course (2008) were established in addition to the existing curriculum for the teaching staff of the Graduate Schools of Engineering, Medicine, and Informatics to jointly foster talent in multi-disciplinary medical engineering fields.
As an effort to improve the research and development environment, we have begun preparations to establish a clinical research center in the hospital district to perform the clinical research and feedback concerning the innovative diagnostic imaging devices and molecular probes developed in the course of the CK Project, as well as an integrated medical engineering education and research center in the Kyoto University campus as a world-class research base with the capacity to give ORT (On-the-Research Training). Along with the clinical research centers described above, it will give Kyoto University a world-class education and research center in integrated medical engineering. In 2008, the project proposed by Kyoto University to create innovative devices for diagnosis and treatment through imaging technologies was adopted as an advanced medical development zone (Special Zone). This zone focuses on studies concerning the use of optical imaging devices under development in the CK Project. Use of this zone is expected to speed up and improve the CK Project activities.