Events Japan-UK Workshop on Infectious Disease Research held in Tokyo

The Japan-UK Workshop on Infectious Disease Research was held in Tokyo on 21-22 January 2019.  The workshop, organized by AMED and the UK’s Medical Research Council (MRC) in cooperation with the British Embassy in Tokyo, involved 24 scientists carrying out research in infectious diseases. In attendance were twelve scientists from the UK and twelve from Japan.  Inviting Dr. Tadahito Kanda(AMED Program Supervisor) and Dr. Charles Bangham(Imperial College London)  as the coordinator, the purpose of the meeting was to inform the participants of current research on infectious diseases being conducted in major universities and institutes in each country, explore the potential for scientific collaboration between the two countries, and to establish new collaborative projects and to expand existing collaborative work.

The workshop was the second held following the first one held in UK in December 2017 coordinated by AMED’s London office and the Division of Infectious Diseases. For the first workshop, there were eight researchers from the Japanese Initiative for Progress of Research on Infectious Disease for Global Epidemics (J-PRIDE) who visited several institutions in the UK. Several substantial collaborations were initiated at this workshop. At the second workshop in Tokyo, possibilities for further collaboration between Japan and the UK were discussed and explored.

This workshop was held under the Memorandum of Cooperation signed by AMED and the MRC in February 2017. AMED will continue to support international research collaborations with the UK.

As part of the Japan-UK statement issued after Prime Minister Abe’s visit to UK in January 2019, prime ministers of both countries welcomed ‘cooperation between Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) and Medical Research Council (MRC) based on their MOC signed in 2017, and specifically joint work on infectious diseases and regenerative medicine starting in 2019’.