Medical Information Sciences Division

Medical Information Sciences Division

１．Program Objectives

There is an urgent need to train professionals who can address drug-related accidents and side effects as well as the challenges of personalized medicine, which is an emerging research field with high social need. Therefore, this division carries out education and research relating to topics such as new methods and technologies, biological responses to drugs, and analysis and evaluation of pathological regulation. We also promote the use of artificial intelligence for working across research disciplines and analyzing big data, including detailed clinical data of individual patients, which is necessary for personalized and preventive medicine and requires the creation of new research fields.

Through these efforts, the Medical Information Sciences Division fosters the development of highly specialized medical staff with knowledge of research methods aimed at realizing cutting-edge medical technologies in fields such as personalized medicine and health sciences, as well as technicians involved in drug validation at food and cosmetics companies and at universities and government agencies.

２． Research Fields

i) Field of Biomedical Informatics

In an effort to realize individualized and preventive medicine based upon an interdisciplinary, cross-sector, and innovative research platform, this area of the program provides education and research opportunities in the fundamental technologies and methodologies required for customized medicine through the accumulation, analysis, and assessment of the latest medical information on lifestyle-related diseases and emerging and reemerging infectious diseases. Development of preventive and therapeutic interventional strategies through analysis of desired and unwanted effects of pharmacological agents from the standpoint of genetic polymorphism is another area of educational and research focus in this program.

ii) Field of Biofunctional Control

This area of the program aims to understand the body's physiological response to, and disease-control mechanisms of, new drug candidates for such conditions as immune, allergic, and infectious diseases, and to provide a foundation for education and research that emphasizes approaches ranging from structural biology to drug discovery and from pharmacodynamic and metabolic pathway analysis to the development of biofunctional control.