Outline of Committee on Promoting Collaboration in Life Sciences

Jun-ichiro Inoue Principal Investigator for Committee on Promoting Collaboration in Life Sciences

"Platforms for Advanced Technologies and Research Resources" was launched in fiscal year (FY) 2016 under the new framework of the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas.

The project has succeeded and developed the previous program "Support Programs for Three Fields in Life Sciences (Cancer, Genome and Brain Sciences)" conducted between FY 2010 and 2015.

Both programs were established by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) under the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas.

"Platforms for Advanced Technologies and Research Resources" aims to establish the academic research support platform to efficiently support various needs of the researchers in grants-in-aid. Also it aims to work in close cooperation with the relevant core bodies such as Inter-University Research Institutes and Joint Usage / Research Centers.

Committee on Promoting Collaboration in Life Sciences is an academic collaborative foundation, primarily focuses on life sciences. Our objective is to contribute the further development of the academic research in Japan through providing the cutting-edge method to the individual researchers on life science KAKENHI (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research), and promoting cooperation among researchers across support functions, cross-disciplinary, and human resource development.

In order to achieve the goal, we organize General Management Group to facilitate a close cooperation between four platforms comprising 51 universities and 25 research institutions which provide 75 support functions nationwide.
We established Administration Office in the Institute of Medical Science, the University of Tokyo for flexible management. Further, we hold several Management Board Meetings in which 16 members participated: three platform representatives and 13 board members, to construct a cooperative system to facilitate a cross-over support functions and to provide technical support with the universities and research institutions nationwide.

Our committee takes a one-stop service system to support researchers to facilitate an efficient coordination across support functions.

Please click here to see General Management Group’s Research Support Plan in FY2019.

In addition to the management functions above, we establish “Group for Actively Engage Society” that engages activities such as consultations, lectures and providing information regarding ELSI (Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues) across the platforms.

Please click here to see Group for Actively Engage Society’s FY2018 Research Support Plan.

In closing, we encourage life science researchers to take advantage of the opportunity offered from our platform for generating their and their project groups' results in academic science as well as to publish the results to the world.

We sincerely hope that they will promote a dialogue with the general public about science and technology through their publication and enlightenment on the generated results and contents of their scientific work.

Also we would like to thank all visitors in general for the support and understanding about the research activities and the researchers. We hope the site content on the researches gives the readers the insights into Japan's current circumstances and achievements in life sciences.