Overseas Collaboration
Establishment of Toyama-Asia-Africa Pharmaceutical Network (TAA-PharmNet)
The project, “Establishment of Toyama-Asia-Africa Pharmaceutical Network (TAA-PharmNet)” was sponsored by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Core-to-Core Program (B. Asia-Africa Science Platforms). TAA-PharmNet is a research core of pharmaceutical sciences for drug discovery. It is established by collaboration between University of Toyama (Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Institute of Natural Medicine) and some universities in Asia and Africa regions. TAA-PharmNet utilizes unknown natural products derived from unexplored traditional medicines and unique natural resources in Asia and Africa.
As part of this project, we hold an annual international symposium: the Symposium on Toyama-Asia-Africa Pharmaceutical Network (or TAA-Pharm Symposium). The inaugural symposium took place in Toyama, Japan in September 2016, and the second symposium was held in Jinan, Shandong Province, China in September 2017. For the final year, 2018, we held the third symposium in Toyama again, that September. This symposium saw active discussions, with the attendance of many researchers from the University of Shandong and Shenyang Pharmaceutical University in China, Kyung Hee University in South Korea, Hasanuddin University in Indonesia, and Cairo University in Egypt, which are international cooperation institutions.
Domestic Collaboration within Japan
Forum Toyama Soyaku
Forum Toyama Soyaku was established in 2000 in order for pharmaceutical industry players, the University of Toyama, and the prefectural government to help advance drug development research and the pharmaceutical industry in Toyama Prefecture through mutual collaboration, and to contribute to regional revitalization and national welfare improvement.
Research meetings take place twice a year, serving as venues for relevant industry-academia-public sector institutions to exchange information and interact with each other. Experts in different fields conduct seminars and discussions on themes of interest for pharmaceutical industry players. To date, 49 research meetings have been held, and Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences teachers coordinated the 1st, 4th, 5th, 8th, 11th, 13th, 17th, 32nd, 39th, 41st, 45th and 49th meetings to release results from leading-edge pharmacy research.
The 41st Research Meeting
The 45th Research Meeting
Toyama Medicinal Chemistry Society : TOMECS
The year 2002 saw the establishment of the Toyama Medicinal Chemistry Society (TOMECS) as a satellite unit of Forum Toyama Soyaku, with the late Dr. Hideo Nemoto (professor emeritus, University of Toyama) playing the key role. This society engages in activities designed to let industry-academia-public sector entities collaborate with each other in Toyama Prefecture, and members exchange information and interact with each other, through research and development based on medicinal chemistry. In 2018, the society’s list of registered individual members comprised 105 individuals: professionals involved in pharmaceutical research, manufacture, or development, mainly at universities, pharmaceutical companies, or government institutions in Toyama Prefecture. These experts contribute to research meeting activities in various forms. One example of this is the regular research meeting held in or around August of each year, to provide topics on medicinal chemistry and exchange information, serving to widen and sustain the horizontal network for industry-academia-public sector entities in Toyama Prefecture. At the same time, these professionals pursue diverse activities, such as co-sponsorship for chemistry conferences and symposiums organized in the prefecture, and committed to help the Japanese Society for Process Chemistry Hokuriku Forum with its inception in fiscal 2018. Fiscal 2018 also saw Dr. Yuji Matsuya, a teaching staff member at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama succeed to the position of chair of the Toyama Medicinal Chemistry Society (TOMECS), handed down seamlessly from the late former chair Dr. Hideo Nemoto (Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama*), to Dr. Yasumaru Hatanaka (Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Toyama*), to Dr. Yoshiro Hirai (Faculty of Science, University of Toyama*), to Dr. Noriyuki Nakajima (Faculty of Engineering, Toyama Prefectural University*). The society seeks to contribute to promotion of the Toyama Medicines initiative by further pursuing research meeting activities with increased vigor going forward.
*Affiliation while serving as chair
2019 Research Meeting
Regional Revitalization
The Toyama Prefectural Government’s “Toyama: the Silicon Valley of Medicine” creation project, of which the University of Toyama was a participant, was selected by the Cabinet Office as a Fiscal 2018 Regional University and Industry Revitalization Grantee Project.
The stated goals of the Toyama Prefectural Government’s “Toyama: the Silicon Valley of Medicine” creation project are to build a consortium for collaboration among industry-academia-public sector pharmaceutical entities in the prefecture and relevant national government agencies, to promote the prefecture’s pharmaceutical industry, and to pursue efforts to make a trillion-yen pharmaceutical industry a reality. Experts hope to see the project advance the “Shining Regional University” initiative, intended to help Toyama draw excellent students and researchers from the rest of Japan and other countries around the world, while helping younger citizens of the prefecture enter school or find employment.
Through this project, the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences pursues research and development based on drug manufacturing and drug delivery systems (DDS) in collaboration with pharmaceutical companies in Toyama Prefecture.
To date, we have participated in the Toyama Basel Joint Symposium, organized as a biennial academic exchange program with the University of Basel, Switzerland, while also working with the prefectural government of Toyama to organize the Summer School, a human resource development program for students in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which will be continued further.