SAYA HIDEYUKI

Head of JKiC Industry-Academia-Medicine
Collaboration Department

Our mission is to deliver good products to society and to foster unique human resources

JKiC is a place for collaboration that brings together the capabilities and seeds of doctors and researchers in Keio University School of Medicine and Hospital and JSR Corporation, which starts to focus on life sciences.

The ultimate goal of this collaboration is to deliver good products to society and to foster unique human resources. Mission of the industry-academia-medical collaboration department is to provide the behind-the-scenes supports for achievement of this goal.

Companies can cultivate highly unique human resources by partnering with academia, and academia will be able to cultivate talented people with ideas that academia has not previously possessed up by collaborating with companies.

Researchers in pharmaceutical or bioscience companies have, to some extent, similar mentality to academic medical researchers. However, researchers in JSR Corporation, which has been conducting research on chemical materials, have quite different view from medical researchers. While adjustment between these two may be difficult, there is the possibility that they can trigger an unprecedented chemical reaction, and we greatly expect for such reaction.

Accademia is inclined to have conducted research and medical treatment that depend on individual ability and technology which is so called a master's skill. It is comparable to passing on a specific skill from a parent to one child. But what is considered increasingly important now is documentation and standardization to ensure smooth transitions to everybody. So, there is a lot to learn from business, such as quality control technology. Conversely, companies can find something to learn from the ideas of researchers who have very strong personalities and skills.

But for this to happen, there needs to be good cooperative framework in place. A top down organization where management says, “I want you to make this” won’t work. The role of a leader is to coordinate the voices from the field saying, “I want to make this.”

If meetings become to report only outcomes, they are nothing more than about getting results. Since this is a place that offers a chance to bring together different cultures, meetings should be for addressing problems, discussing them from different cultural perspectives, and reaching a solution. I hope to make meetings a place to solve problems so that we can reach to some products that have never been seen before.

In pursuing research, it is important to have companies participate at the germination of an idea to grow that idea together and share in the results, rather than have researchers make something and then have business commercialize it. Taking this approach, we will be able to deliver good outcomes and products to society.