HEALTH
Professor Akiyama Wins Japanese Minister of Health, Labor, Welfare Award
Dr. Yutaka Akiyama, Professor of Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, was awarded the 11th Industry-Academia-Government Collaboration Merit Award by the Japanese Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare.
Given by the Cabinet Office, this award honors the achievements of the success stories of big initiatives such as a pioneering industry-academia-government collaboration activity. The award aims to contribute to further progress of collaborative activities. It has been given since 2003. And it will continue to be awarded to those who make particularly significant achievements from the point of view of the promotion of drugs and medical equipment industries, among others. Award summary is as follows.
Chronicle
Award name: | Industry-academia-government collaboration Merit Award, "the Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare Award" |
Winner Project: | Development of drug discovery research database "Neglected Tropical Infectious Diseases" (NTDs) |
Winners name: | Professor Yutaka Akiyama, Department of Computer Science, Graduate School of |
Reasons for Award: | Yutaka Akiyama, professor from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Kiyoshi Kita, professor of the University of Tokyo, and Astellas Pharma tropical infectious disease research team collaborate on drug discovery research with a database that integrates vast amounts of information about the pathogen of "neglected tropical infectious diseases" developed a iNTRODB. It is utilized by researchers involved in drug discovery of "neglected tropical infectious diseases" around the world. With this database, we are accelerating the research activities. Achievements like these is what is appreciated as an example that contributed to solve the global challenges due to the close cooperation of the industry, academia and government of Japan and international NPO. |
The iNTRODB is the world's first integrated database that assists researchers to discover new drugs for the treatment of NTDs, and has been built on the basis of the supercomputers and expertise in information technology at Tokyo Tech, the genetic and biological data and knowledge about protozoa at the University of Tokyo, and the knowledge and expertise on drug discovery and research at Astellas. The iNTRODB contains genomic data on trypanosomatid protozoa that cause NTDs (about 27,000 entries), data on protein structures (about 7,000 entries), and data on related compounds (about 1,000,000 entries). The database has been carefully designed to serve researchers who wish to access adequate information to determine whether a candidate target protein or candidate drug compound is suitable for further investigation. It is open to all researchers in the world to encourage the research community to create effective therapies for patients with NTDs due to protozoa as soon as possible. The iNTRODB was created as a part of the collaborative research project for new drug treatment for NTDs by 6 institutes in Japan i.e., Tokyo Tech, the University of Tokyo, Astellas, Nagasaki University, the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), as well as the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), a non-profit drug research and development organization. There are still many diseases with significant unmet medical needs in the world, and NTDs are among such diseases. NTDs are significant public health problems around the globe, and international approaches have been implemented to treat NTDs. The collaborative research project for NTDs in Japan has targeted to find new drug candidates for leishmaniasis (estimated patient number: 12 million patients), Chagas' disease (8~9 million patients) and human African trypanosomiasis (300,000 patients) for which no effective treatments are available yet.
“I am very pleased with the award. Think about the impact of advancing the industry-academia-government collaboration research on neglected tropical diseases. First point, it is possible to utilize advanced technology directly for global issues that makes Japan proud. Second, is to be open to the latest technology without thought of gain, in fact, it might then lead to technology development by leaps and bounds. This award is a result that was born under the collaboration with Associate Professor Kijima Shoichi, Masakazu Shima and Takashi Ishida, Assistant Professor at the University, and I would like to thank those involved,” said Professor Akiyama.