BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Full speed AMED

AMED on its way toward improving Japan's translational capability

September 24, 2015 7:00 AM UTC

In the five months since the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) opened its doors, the organization has created a network of 80 Japanese medical schools and hospitals to predict what the future needs will be in its aging society, launched a genomics initiative on rare diseases, and brought together 25 Japanese pharmaceutical companies and a host of academic labs in a drug discovery consortium. But the real test will be whether the new agency can bring about the culture change it believes is necessary to streamline drug development and induce researchers, clinicians and companies to share more data.

The agency - which has been likened to NIH - was set up to drive basic research and foster translation of home-grown research as part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to reform the country's biomedical funding system and break down bureaucratic walls...