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 --