Completed Department of Innovative Drug Discovery and Development

The Department of Innovative Drug Discovery and Development is the organization that plays a central role in the pharmaceutical project (one of the six integrated projects proceeded by AMED). The Department supports pharmaceutical R&D taking into account the characteristics and properties of modalities in areas ranging from target identification to clinical research in order to promote the practical application of drugs to address high medical needs.  One of the main missions of this department is to facilitate the new drugs’ development by utilizing technologies and knowledge related to various modalities cross-sectionally across diseases.

The Division of Pharmaceutical Research and Development promotes research that strengthens the foundation of drug discovery support and the development of technologies that can be the drug discovery foundation, targeting various modalities through collaboration with academia and industry.
Specifically, the division promotes fundamental R&D related to modalities, from the creation of new modalities to the design, compound optimization, activity evaluation, and R&D of manufacturing technology for each modality. The division works on building the support foundation required for drug discovery R&D, such as drug design technologies, compound libraries, and shared analysis equipment. The division also supports drug development, from target identification to clinical research, from the viewpoint of various disease, including cancers.

The Division of Strategic Planning and Evaluation, which acts as the headquarters of drug discovery support network, has a system in place to provide accurate and effective support for each stage of the development: from target verification to preclinical research in drug discovery R&D originating in academia. Drug discovery coordinators with extensive R&D experience at pharmaceutical companies strongly support drug discovery research through the evaluation of drug discovery seeds, the formulation of intellectual property strategies, project management, and transfer of research results to industry. The division also supports drug development, from search for drug discovery target to clinical research, targeting infectious diseases and rare/intractable.

To achieve rapid and safe clinical application of innovative drugs, medical devices, and regenerative medicine products, the Division of Regulatory Science promotes the regulatory science researches related to proper and prompt prediction, evaluation, and judgment of the quality, efficacy, and safety of products based on scientific evidences.” This leads to the development and standardization of the evaluation technology that embodies quality, efficacy, and safety, the clarification of judgment criteria, and the clarification of the scientific requirement for approval reviews.
In addition, this division aims to create innovative drugs by promoting non-clinical studies to connect the basic research results in Japan to clinical trials and also high-quality clinical studies that fully secure science and ethics, as well as research that aims to further activate clinical researches and trials in Japan.