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  • 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 --

Geoffrey Ginsburg: And I'll leave it to you on the order.

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