[No. 86] Akira Asai

When driving east from the Shizuoka side along National Route 134, which follows the coast of the Shonan region of Kanagawa Prefecture where I was born and raised, a strangely shaped rock comes into view offshore to the front right just after crossing the Sagami River. Uba-shima Island (commonly known as Eboshi-iwa, or "Crow-hat Rock"), which resembles a traditional *eboshi* hat, greets me with the exact same appearance it had when I was a child, in stark contrast to the ever-changing townscape on the opposite shore. Its rugged and unique appearance—said to have been used as a target for drills by the stationed US military after the war—seems to teach us the importance of identity for nations, organizations, and individuals, especially in these challenging times.

I entered the Faculty of Science and Technology at Keio University in 1983, after graduating from a local high school and spending a year at a preparatory school in Ochanomizu. I chose this university partly for the advantage of being able to commute from home. During the liberal arts curriculum (first and second undergraduate years) at the Hiyoshi Campus, perhaps because I still had some academic momentum from my prep school days, I was more absorbed in my hobbies than my studies. This was also the period when I would play the electric guitar in live music venues with my bandmates, tossing around my unbecomingly long hair.

It was probably when I entered the specialized curriculum in my third year that I began to seriously think about my future. I had more opportunities to go to the Yagami Campus for classes, and I remember feeling a sense of purpose seeing my senior students in white lab coats striding across campus, engaged in discussions. The specialized subjects that began during this period were advanced and practical—*jitsugaku (science)*—and it felt as if the future I was heading toward was unfolding beyond the writing on the blackboard.

Later, in my fourth year after advancing to the Department of Applied Chemistry, I joined the laboratory of Professor Mitsuhiro Kinoshita, and for my master's program, I was in the laboratory of Professor Yasuharu Otsuka. During my time in the Kinoshita lab, I was directly supervised by Dr. Kazunobu Toshima, who was a doctoral student at the time, and he taught me both the joy and the rigor of organic chemistry. In the Otsuka lab, under the guidance of Dr. Haruma Kawaguchi, I participated in a joint research project with Dr. Hiroshi Handa of the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Tokyo, and we succeeded in developing a new DNA affinity chromatography method using polymer microspheres. This was in a field equivalent to what we now call nanotechnology or chemical biology, and it was a groundbreaking research theme for its time. Being involved in such cutting-edge research under the enthusiastic guidance of my mentors unexpectedly became a major catalyst for me to continue my research career.

After completing my master's program in 1989, I joined what was then Kyowa Hakko Kogyo Co., Ltd. (now Kyowa Kirin Co., Ltd.) and was assigned to the Tokyo Research Laboratories in Machida City. The first anticancer drug project I joined after entering the company bore fruit in about three years, and a new anticancer drug, KW-2189, proceeded to clinical trials. As a result, I was able to publish numerous papers on the analysis of its mechanism of action, an area of the project in which I had taken a leading role. I still vividly remember the joy of receiving acceptance notices (which came by letter, not email, back then) after submitting manuscripts I had prepared on weekends to top journals like *JACS* and *Cancer Research*.

Based on these research achievements, I was able to compile my doctoral dissertation, titled "Studies on DNA-Binding Antitumor Antibiotics," and was later awarded a doctorate in fiscal 1996 from the Major in Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Technology, under the supervision of Professor Shuichi Matsumura of the Department of Applied Chemistry. When I visited the Mita Campus for the commencement, a place I had actually only been to a few times as a student, I was struck anew by the university's tradition as a center for the creation and dissemination of knowledge. It was also a day when I quietly vowed to myself to pursue further self-improvement and to challenge the unknown.

After that, I was able to continue engaging in discovery research for new anticancer drugs at the company. In the course of working on various anticancer drug themes, I was dispatched in 1995 to Geron Corporation, a US venture company that had become famous for its telomerase research (and is now well-known in the field of stem cell therapy), and in 2001, I studied abroad in the lab of Professor Peter K. Vogt at The Scripps Research Institute in the US, who is renowned for his research on oncogenes and signal transduction. Witnessing the American style of drug discovery and development, where basic research and new drug development (including clinical trials) proceed efficiently as two wheels of a cart, I felt a sense of crisis that Japan, with its insufficient collaboration between academia and pharma, might be left behind. It was also a time when I pondered what I could do for Japan's future in my own area of expertise, the life sciences.

Later, as fate would have it, I moved to the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Shizuoka in 2004. At the university, I am advancing research aimed at creating new and original anticancer drugs, leveraging my experience from the corporate world and collaborating with domestic pharmaceutical companies. Of course, in addition to research, an important mission at the university is to train the next generation of drug discovery researchers through practical drug discovery research. Although the number of graduates is still small, they are active in many fields after graduation, including research positions in companies. (For recent research content, lab information, and more, please see the laboratory website .)

When I completed my master's program, I could not have imagined where I am today. However, even as times, places, positions, and methods change, one's own unchanging principles and style always remain. In my case, at least, I am convinced that this identity was cultivated through my education at the Faculty of Science and Technology, Keio University. For Japan, a country poor in resources, to survive in the international community, it is necessary to create high-value-added products that are competitive globally, such as groundbreaking new drugs. The role to be played by graduates of the Faculty of Science and Technology is becoming extremely important. I sincerely hope that our junior students will take advantage of this blessed and traditional educational environment to learn from good teachers, converse with good friends, and devote themselves to self-improvement, so that they may greatly contribute to the development of Japan as a nation of science and technology, becoming leaders equipped with a broad perspective and originality.