[Special Feature: 10th Anniversary of the Faculty of Pharmacy] Promoting Joint Research within Keio through the Keio Medical and Pharmaceutical Science and Engineering Commons (MPEC)

2018/10/05

One of the things the Faculty of Pharmacy most anticipated through the merger between Keio University and Kyoritsu University of Pharmacy was the revitalization of research activities through joint research within Keio. The Keio Medical and Pharmaceutical Science and Engineering Commons (MPEC) was established in 2010, centered around Professor Kazuo Tanishita (at the time) of the Faculty of Science and Technology, as an organization to facilitate information exchange through collaboration between the School of Medicine, the Faculty of Science and Technology, and the Faculty of Pharmacy, and to create interdisciplinary fusion research originating from Keio that transcends faculty boundaries.

Since 2010 was shortly after the merger, participating in MPEC was a moment where we could truly savor the fruits of the Faculty of Pharmacy becoming a member of a comprehensive university. Currently, as one of the Keio Advanced Research Centers (KARC), it is operated under a cooperative system of faculty members from the three faculties, centered on Center Director Professor Kazuo Kishi of the School of Medicine and Associate Professor Ryo Sudo of the Faculty of Science and Technology.

The main activity is holding a medical-engineering-pharmacy collaboration symposium titled the "MPEC Incubation Lounge" once every four months. Although the School of Medicine, Faculty of Science and Technology, and Faculty of Pharmacy are each on different campuses, we have continued these meetings by rotating through the three campuses once a year. The 20th meeting is scheduled to be held next March. We take pride in the fact that by having one young faculty member or sometimes even a graduate student from each faculty give a lecture every time, we have been able to promote academic exchange in a bottom-up rather than top-down manner.

In addition to lecturers from each faculty, we have also practically worked on promoting joint research and securing research funds by having representatives from the Office for Research Coordination and Administration, the Keio University Hospital Clinical and Translational Research Center, and the JSR-Keio University Medical and Chemical Innovation Center (JKiC) speak about their activities almost every time. In fact, from the Faculty of Pharmacy, Dean Hideko Kanazawa, Professor Naomi Urushihara, myself, and Associate Professor Kenichi Nagase are currently participating as members, and all are actively promoting inter-faculty joint research with the School of Medicine or the Faculty of Science and Technology.

Furthermore, I have heard that new cross-faculty joint research has often been born between faculty members who have given lectures, leading to joint applications for and acquisition of research funds. Not only in terms of research but also in education, we have proposed curricula aimed at collaboration in graduate school education to train highly skilled interdisciplinary personnel. Interdisciplinary research is essential in the pharmaceutical sciences, which is a comprehensive science, and I hope to continue to develop activities toward research collaboration within Keio in the future.