Program Summary

It is a critical issue for Japan to keep international competitiveness in the field of advanced biological medicines and biological treatments, and to maintain the ability for international medical research and development. To realize the purpose, it is required to uncover and develop excellent technologies and seeds which are invented in Japanese academic institutions . Those excellent scientific findings and innovative technologies are becoming to play key roles for pharmaceutical companies to create the advanced biological medicine.

Creating intellectual properties from innovative academia seeds for biological medicines or basic technology, and licensing them out to pharmaceutical companies.

Basic technology development for biological medicines in four elemental technologies and combination of element technologies

1. 1) Gene transfer technology (gene therapy, immune cell therapy, etc.)
2. 2) Gene expression control technology (gene editing, oligonucleotide therapeutics, etc.)
3. 3) Improvement of biological medicines (antibody, glycosylated peptide, middle molecule, etc.)
4. 4) Additional technologies for drug development (drug delivery system (DDS), effect/safety evaluation, imaging, etc.)
5. 5) Integrated technology by combining and optimizing the element technologies 1) to 4)

Program Supervisor (PS)
Program Officer (PO)

Progress management, direction and advice necessary for promoting the projects smoothly

AMED (Program office/Department of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer)

Program Office: Operation of the program (outsourcing contracts, progress management, budget management, meeting management, promotion of collaboration between projects within the program, management of the project evaluation committee, intellectual property/license management, etc.)
Department of Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer: Prior technical research for the projects, consultation for intellectual property

Comprehensive support project (one team)

Support for promotion of research projects through progress management, intellectual property/license and collaboration among research projects in cooperation with the AMED under the direction of PS/PO

R & D projects are implemented by 27 representative organizations

Implementation of R & D project

1. 1) Comprehensive support project, which was adopted in the first call, establishes effective support scheme for 27 research projects, adopted in the second call, through the project, such as detailed support for intellectual property/license, proposal of collaboration between research projects, etc.
2. 2) In the 5 large and integrated R & D projects, a license manager who performs overall management for licensing out to pharmaceutical companies is assigned within the project and promotes support activities for licensing out to pharmaceutical companies in cooperation with the support team.