Europe’s largest biotechnology partnering conference “BIO-Europe(r) 2013” was held in Vienna, Austria on November 4-6. Executive Director and Vice-President (Research) Shin-ichi Yamamoto, research administrators (URA), and the manager of Intellectual Property Office attended BIO-Europe(r) took advantage of the conference to put the seeds of research from our university on show.

BIO-Europe is attended by a large number of pharmaceutical and bio corporations from across Europe and America. The Japan booth was run by the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO). The staff from our school exchanged opinions with JETRO concerning research and intellectual property strategies for corporations in the field of life science, and introduced the seeds of research from our school to European and American corporations, proactively promoting the possibility of joint research with our university.

BIO-Europe 2013 was also attended by Momotaro-Gene Inc., the bio-tech company that has its beginnings at our university. Professor Hiromi Kumon and others from the Graduate School of Medicine, Dentistry and Pharmaceutical Sciences presented the results of their drug discovery research using the new, still under development “gene therapy REIC/Dkk-3”, attracting attention from both researchers and corporations.

We intend to further advance our strategic international development, in order to create industries with high attached value that will lead to revolutionaryinnovations, and to enthusiastically conduct the kind of research promotion and enhancement that will cement our position as “Research University: Okayama University”.

This trip was conducted as part of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s “The Program for Promoting the Enhancement of Research Universities”, a new program from 2013. (Captions)