Division of Innovative Research and Development Advanced Research & Development Programs for Medical Innovation (AMED-CREST)

[Research and Development Objective] New approaches in drug and vaccine discovery for infectious diseases

The goal of this R&D area is to establish technologies and infrastructure to accelerate basic research in the field of infectious disease drug discovery.

In order to respond immediately to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, we need an understanding of the pathogens involved and the interactions with the host as a prerequisite to the development of prophylactic, diagnostic, and therapeutic interventions. Furthermore, there is a need to accelerate the processes required for clinical application. However, the basic research process has become a bottleneck for drug discovery because of the diversity of pathogens, various phases of disease from acute to chronic and latent infections, and the need to respond immediately during a pandemic. These are problems unique to infectious diseases.

This R&D area aims to address the issues in the basic research phase of infectious disease drug discovery by combining existing drug discovery seeds, infrastructure/technologies, research resources for the discovery of drugs against infectious diseases caused by bacteria, fungi, and viruses, etc.; developing an array of robust drug discovery modalities that ultimately translate into clinical application; and strongly promoting interdisciplinary research. We will accumulate research findings that lead to development of new drug discovery modalities, optimization of existing modalities, and development of new platform technologies. The purpose of this R&D area is to accelerate infectious disease drug discovery as part of our efforts to build expertise to respond immediately when new pathogens emerge in the future.

2021

Program Supervisor (PS)

 DOI Yohei

Professor, Departments of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, Fujita Health University School of Medicine

Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Program Officer (PO)

 MATSUURA Yoshiharu

Director, Center for Infectious Diseases Education and Research (CiDER) and SA Professor, Laboratory of Virus Control, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases (RIMD), Osaka University

R&D Area Advisors

IWASAKI Masaru

Vice-President, University of Yamanashi

SATO Junko

Associate Executive Director, Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Agency

SAWA Hirofumi

Director/Head of Division of Biological Response Analysis,

 

Institute for Vaccine Research and Development: IVReD, Hokkaido University

TAKAHASHI Yoshimasa

Director, Research Center for Drug and Vaccine Development, National Institute of Infectious Diseases

TAWARA Shuichi

Professor, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Okayama University of Science

TSUMOTO Kouhei

Professor, School of Engineering and The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo

HIRAI Keiji

Visiting Professor, Ōmura Satoshi Memorial Institute, Kitasato University

HONMA Teruki

Team Leader, Laboratory for Structure-based Molecular Design,

 

Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research, RIKEN Yokohama Institute

YAMANO Yoshinori

Chief Scientific Officer for Infectious Disease, Pharmaceutical Research Division, Shionogi & Co., Ltd.

YAMAMOTO Tomoko

Auditor, Chiba University