Chie Ohno

Bachelor’s Degree Holder for 2015 and Master’s Degree Holder for 2017

I entered the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Faculty because I wanted to pursue research useful to humanity, rather than research for its own sake. As an undergraduate, I learned through lectures and laboratory courses that individual drugs, routinely used without much thought, represent an integration of various knowledge, wisdom, and advanced technologies, based on the three pillars of biology, physics, and chemistry. In the Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, I took note of proteins called “ion channels” for work on basic research with the aim of developing therapy drugs equipped with unprecedented new functional mechanisms.
Toyama has a long history of pharmacy, stretching back centuries and earning it the nickname of “the city of medicine.” Toyama Prefecture is home to many pharmaceutical companies, and as part of our student laboratory courses, we went on a tour of their plants and pharmaceutical research institutes. I was provided with an opportunity to take a firsthand look at the drug development process and to get in touch with professionals on the front lines, which was quite helpful for me as a point of reference for thinking about my future. As a result, after completing my graduate school courses, I wound up working on research and development to test drugs designed to detect disease early or facilitate therapy policy decision-making. I will continue to work hard on research to contribute to the health of people in Japan and around the world, always bearing in mind the pharmacy knowledge I acquired at the University of Toyama, as well as the spirit of drug development research fostered by my education there.