Geoffrey Ginsburg: And I'll leave it to you on the order.
Naoko Okamura: Thank you very much for introducing guests
from Japan.
As you see, three representatives has come to this important conference from the government,
and from the national project, and from the university.
I'm Naoko Okamura, counselor at the Cabinet Secretariat of the Japanese government.
I'm not your scientist, unfortunately, but the -- as the national officials, and in charge
of the promoting new initiative for medical research -- over the medical research.
Today we have three topics.
First topic, which I will explain, is national medical new policy.
And the second topic, to be presented by Dr. Kubo, is National Genomic Medicine Project.
For in his topic, Dr. Miyano will talk about a project implemented by the University of
Tokyo.
After five years has passed, since Mr. Abe left the prime minister's position, he came
back.
He recaptured government last year.
And soon after, he formed his new cabinet.
He declared three pillars of stability.
One is the broad monetary policy, and the second one was the flexible fiscal policy,
and the third one was the economic goal [spelled phonetically] strategy.
One of the key policy issues regarding the goal strategy is medical and healthcare policy.
Yes.
In Japan, the government used to promote medical research and development through three ministries:
Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare; Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and
Technology; and Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry.
However, as you can see, this is the new structure to promote the national medical research and
development policy in Japan.
We've established these all structure last year.
In order to achieve practical use of national medical research, Prime Minister Abe decided
to integrate all the medical R&D budget under the leadership of the cabinet secretariat.
These budget should be allocated upon the prioritized field by the decision of the headquarter
in accordance with the strategy policy for the medical research.
The government is now also preparing for the blue one, a new independent administrative
agency.
This new agency shall manage all the related activities in the field of medical research.
The -- all the budget will be allocated centrally by this new agency.
We intend all the national project to cover from basic to practical use seriously.
As a result of the political -- huge political initiative, the budget for the fiscal year
2014 increases about 20 percent from the former.
One of the key component of the corporation project is listed here [unintelligible].
One of them is genetic medicine, the last one on the left side.
The total budget for the same is about 7 billion yen, which is approximately $70 million.
This bit shows the brief idea of the cooperated project toward realizing genomic medicine.
The government coordinate not only basic program and the research infrastructure but also clinical
research, on the left side, in a single and comprehensive view in order to achieve clinical
application.
For this purpose, we had allocated several goals to be achieved in 2015 or 2020 or 2013
from the beginning stage.
Okay, now from this place, I should pass the microphone to the specialist national -- and
the leader of the national project, Dr. Kubo, please.
Michiaki Kubo: Thank you very much.
And I'll briefly a overview of the genomic medicine project in Japan.
And the aim of this project include the medical care and health care for common diseases,
including cancer and the lifestyle-related disease by using the implementation of the
genomic medicine.
So the based on the health on medical strategy by the Japanese government, this project promote
the clinical application of the genomic research finding for the aiming of the return to the
public and empower the strengthening of the genomic research infrastructure.
So this project has three pillars.
One -- the first on the left side in the construction of the biobank network using the useful biobank
network, Central Genome Center in the middle position, we'll perform the large-scale genomic
research and to build a comprehensive genomic variation database that link to the clinical
phenotypes, such as disease susceptibility or the drug [unintelligible].
And a family get the genomic variation database, and medical genome center will perform the
clinical research, and by using the genomic information to validate the efficacy and the
cost-effectiveness of the genomic information in the clinical setting.
And so that the [unintelligible] genome center be established, the optimized treatment through
the prediction of drug responses and prediction optimization of the predictive diagnostics
and optimization of the preventive health care.
For the other talk in the biobank network, and Dr. Miyano will talk about the supercomputer
facility in the Central Genomic Center, and also the other activities in the Tokyo University.
I want to first show you the BioBank Japan Project.
This project was started in 2003 as a leading project of the MEXT.
In the first period of the five years, we collected 47 target diseases in patients'
DNA, serum, and critical information, and constructed the BioBank Japan, including the
-- these are the numbers of the patients.
And using these samples in the -- we performed the large-scale GWAS and identified many suspect
genes for various diseases and drug responses.
And the third period, from the last year, we further extend the research infrastructure
of the BioBank Japan, and also promote the genomic research.
The second biobank in the National Center BioBank Network that was recently developed
by the cooperation of the six national centers, including geriatric diseases, cardiovascular
diseases, and the genomic medicine, cancer center, childhood disease, and neuropsychiatric
diseases.
They are now collecting samples and making the catalog databases.
And the important thing is the huge number of tissue collection in this biobank.
And the third one is the Tohoku Medical Megabank.
As you know that Japan has great East Asian earthquake in three years ago, and this project
was started as one of the recovery projects.
The objectives of this project is a revitalization of the medical care in the disaster area and
develop infrastructure for next-generation medicine.
This project will perform the health [unintelligible] in the 150,000 individuals in the disaster
area, and construct biobank, and analyze to do the genomic analysis to -- for the aiming
of the drug discovery or the personalized medicine.
So I will move to the next person.
Satoru Miyano: Well, thank you.
The Institute of Medical Science of the University of Tokyo locates in the center of Tokyo.
And it is in 10 minutes to the Super Express train station and in 30 minutes to the Tokyo
Hyundai Airport.
Location is very fine.
And in that campus, around 1,000 people are working.
And the team of the Human Genome Center, the Advanced Clinical Research Center, and Research
Hospital with 135 beds and supercomputer system is involved with our genomic medicine practice.
And this supercomputer system will be used by the end of this year.
We will have a new one next year, next January.
And the usage is limited to genomic and biological sciences, not for physics.
And it's important -- its performance is currently 225 TFLOPS.
It has 22,000 CPU cores, and the storage system is 3 petabyte high speed parallel [unintelligible]
and 2 petabyte normal disc system, in total 5 petabyte storage.
And annual budget is about $10 million.
And the genomic medicine started at IMS in 2001 by focusing on specific genes in the
small scale, as shown in -- sorry -- as shown in this slide.
And the patient in here -- patient and the client counselor hereditary diseases, common
diseases, and the genetic issues.
The team of genetic medicine is collaborating with the Japanese Association of Hospitals
for Genetic Medicine and the Tokyo Genetic Counseling Network.
And the follow-up and surveillance of genetic counseling has been provided, and it has a
history of 13 years.
And, you know, by the drastic advancement of sequencing technologies, such as [unintelligible]
base the sequencing to cope with the near future genomic medicine, we are now extending
this system to whole genome sequencing more.
The ELSI team was -- is directed by Kaori Muto and the Genetic Counseling Team is directed
by Yoichi Furukawa.
And at the hospital, clinical sequence covers cancer and blood disorders due to limited
expertise.
And the whole genome sequencing is currently as a part of research.
And we recognize the bottleneck of the system is data analysis and the clinical interpretation.
And the more serious problem is lack of specialists.
Who can do this task?
Yeah.
Decision support system and effective use of biomedical big data will be a very important
key to our practice.
And this is part of a sequence on the data analysis facilities, and the supercomputer
there was already installed and most equipment are in placed in this secure network system.
And the genetic -- and the genomic information is separated from the medical record by the
policy.
And for sequencing technology, we are waiting for nanopore sequencing or without a nanopore
sequencing.
And the last sentence is the University of Tokyo is founding a -- University of Tokyo
is founding the International Genomic Medicine Research Organization by participating in
two research institutions and two graduate schools.
One is school of medicine.
Thank you very much.
[applause]
Male Speaker:One question about this -- particularly this last piece where you're obviously generating
an enormous amount of research data, but on the right-hand side, you anticipate clinical
applications.
And I'm wondering what process you have in place to make the decision about when something
gets released from research and put into clinical practice.
Satoru Miyano: Well, it's a headache.
[laughter]
Male Speaker:Tell us something we don't know.
Satoru Miyano: Frankly speaking.
Male Speaker:We would characterize it as a major headache, but I think we're on the same
page.
I was wondering if you could -- could you put the slide back up, please?
Could you talk more about the International Genomic Medicine Research Organization?
I know you -- we were a little late on time.
Satoru Miyano: Last one?
Male Speaker:The last slide.
Just in terms of -- yes.
So what -- you're founding that.
What do you envision that to be?
And I'm thinking about that from the perspective of how that, which has international in it,
would interface with what we're trying to do here and where there might be some synergies.
Satoru Miyano: Yeah, but the international mirrors -- the
-- this is within the University of Tokyo, but the collaborating with some international
universities -- yeah, we have not specified, but candidates always.
Male Speaker: So you're just forming it --
Satoru Miyano: Yes, right.
Male Speaker: [inaudible] international.
Satoru Miyano: Truly not domestic, I mean.
Yeah.
Not closed within Japan.
Male Speaker:And the funding model?
Satoru Miyano: Oh, well.
It's a good question, see, the --
[laughter]
Yeah.
She is --
[laughter]
She is a kind of boss in a very high place.
And she is whipping us to --
[laughter]
-- to install these kind of thing and make proposal to feed the hot idea.
Yeah.
[laughter]
I have been writing a proposal every year, yeah, but have failed.
But new initiative started.
I do hope the -- such international organization to collaborate internationally will be created.
I do hope.
Thank you for support.
[laughter]
Geoffrey Ginsburg:Well, I want to thank all of you, Ms. Okamura, Dr. Kubo, Dr. Miyano.
Thank you for your presentation, and a great note to end on for the day.
We have still one more item to cover as we --