Medicinal Sciences Division

Medicinal Sciences Division

１．Program Objectives

This division trains professionals who can help in preventing and treating new types of infectious diseases and lifestyle diseases and who can contribute to addressing national issues such as Japan's super-aged society. We carry out education and research regarding systematic drug discovery based on expansive data related to the structure and function of genes and proteins acquired through advances in genomics and structural biology. Our other education and research activities relate to the diagnosis and prevention of modern diseases using functional analysis ranging from the cellular and molecular levels to the individual level. Through these efforts, the division produces technicians for drug discovery research at pharmaceutical companies and other bio industry companies, as well as drug discovery researchers who work at academic institutions.

２．Research Fields

i) Field of Biological Molecular Sciences

Establishment of a new drug discovery research platform built upon human genome information is an urgent need as scientists pursue pharmacological approaches to deal with rapidly emerging diseases and lifestyle diseases. To this end, integration of leading-edge information and technologies in genome science, structural biology, and other life science areas is essential for education and research in drug discovery science. This area of the program focuses on understanding biological phenomena arising from the interactions between biomacromolecules and organic small molecule compounds by combining chemical and biological methods with chemical genetics approaches while providing educational and research opportunities that form a basis for processes conceived to discover new functional molecules.

ii) Field of System Biological Technologies

To address rapidly emerging new diseases, acceleration of pharmaceutical research and development of early diagnostic tools are high priorities. In order to accomplish these things, it is necessary to reduce dependency on in-life experiments by developing high-throughput biofunctional assay technologies, genetic diagnostics, and disease biomarkers based on in vitro systems using enzymological and cellular approaches. This area of the program emphasizes education and research in prevention, therapy, and diagnosis of modern diseases by addressing the interactions and regulatory mechanisms at het molecular, cellular and individual levels in the context of the concept of life as a network system.