[No. 52] Hideaki Kakeya

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone involved for giving me the opportunity to write for this column.

In April 1985, I moved to Tokyo from the countryside of Okayama Prefecture and enrolled in Cluster III (as it was then called) of the Faculty of Science and Technology at Keio University. I then chose to major in the Department of Chemistry (as part of the 5th class of students), which had a small class size of 40 students per year. I recall choosing the Department of Chemistry because, through lectures and student experiments, I could feel the passion and enthusiasm of the professors who had recently established it.

From my graduation research through my master's program, I was a member of the Enzymatic Organic Chemistry Laboratory (under Prof. Hiromichi Ohta and Prof. Takeshi Sugai), where I learned the ABCs of being a researcher. Around that time, I vaguely wanted to become a researcher in a "bio-related" field based on chemistry. I desperately screened for enzymes and microorganisms that could catalyze new chemical reactions. Although it was mostly a series of failures, I also experienced the thrill of obtaining good results a few times, which I believe set me on the path to becoming a researcher.

During my Doctoral Programs, I joined the newly established Biochemistry Laboratory in the Bio-Medical Engineering Major of the Graduate School of Science and Technology (under Prof. Kazuo Umezawa and Prof. Masaya Imoto). There, with the passion and perseverance I had cultivated in the Department of Chemistry as my foundation, I was taught the true excitement of natural products chemistry. After obtaining my Doctor of Engineering degree, I joined the Antibiotics Laboratory at RIKEN (under principal investigator Hiroyuki Osada) and have been engaged in "chemical biology research based on natural products chemistry." When Prof. Koji Kaya (former professor in the Department of Chemistry) was appointed as my direct superior, the Director of the RIKEN Central Research Institute, I felt a sense of strange fate.

Group photo from a tour of research institutes and factories during my third year in the Department of Chemistry (February 1988, Aichi, at the Institute for Molecular Science or the National Institute for Basic Biology). Prof. Shosuke Yamamura (Professor Emeritus, Keio University) and Prof. Koji Kaya (currently at RIKEN).

Having spent more than half of my life in the Kanto region since entering the Faculty of Science and Technology, a major turning point came for me last year when I was given the opportunity to engage in education and research at the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto University. The main research themes in my current laboratory include: 1) Chemical biology research aimed at developing next-generation chemotherapy for multifactorial diseases (cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, immune disorders, diabetes, heart disease, etc.); 2) Natural products chemistry and pharmacognosy of novel bioactive small molecules aimed at discovering drug lead compounds; 3) System chemotherapy research utilizing chemoinformatics and bioinformatics; 4) Genetic engineering research (combinatorial biosynthesis) for the production of useful substances and drug discovery; and 5) The construction of innovative platforms to promote advanced chemical biology research. It was a complete coincidence, but last year, a "Basic Agreement on Collaboration and Cooperation" was signed between my alma mater, Keio University, and Kyoto University, and I once again felt a sense of strange fate.

Grateful for the various fateful encounters that began at my alma mater, Keio University, I intend to continue dedicating myself fully to education and research. My goal is to pursue highly original research aimed at creating new "science" and "medicines," and to produce outstanding talent for society in interdisciplinary fields such as chemistry, biology, pharmacy, and bioinformatics.