Tokyo

Japan's struggling genome research sector will be boosted by the opening of a new centre, the result of cooperation between several ministries. The centre's director will coordinate the country's research on the application of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs).

The centre, for which the Science and Technology Agency (STA) has set aside ¥1.9 billion ($18 million), will be located in Yokohama at Riken's Genomic Sciences Centre. In the past, Tokyo University's Institute of Medical Sciences and Tokushima University accounted for most SNP research in Japan.

Under Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's Millennium Project, more than 20 universities and several foundations, consortia, and public and private research institutions will work together in an initiative sponsored jointly by STA, the Ministry of Education, Sports and Culture (Monbusho), the Ministry of Health and Welfare (MHW) and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).

The project will draw together several strands of research, from the sequencing of 30,000 full-length complementary DNAs and the identification of 150,000 SNPs, to SNP frequency analysis, construction of reference databases, diagnostic screens, and pharmaceutical and medical applications.

Kumao Toyoshima, of Sumitomo Hospital in Osaka, is tipped as the probable new director. He will be expected to coordinate research that leads from SNP databases to practical applications in five key areas: cancer; metabolic disorders such as diabetes; circulatory disorders such as high blood pressure; immunological disorders; and dementia. This will mean working closely with Tokyo Medical Centre and the MHW's National Cancer Centre.

The centre is well funded, but some people are concerned that the involvement of several ministries and institutions may lead to inefficiency. One senior researcher criticizes what he calls a “budget first, strategy later” approach in which money is first allocated to the ministries, which decide how to distribute funds among their own institutions.

Critics say that a better alternative would be to determine the research needs of the various institutions in an interministerial committee and then allot money accordingly. The top-down strategy also leads to some unnatural divisions in research structure, such as between the identification of SNPs and the search for disease-related genes.

Funding in the new plan is focused on identifying SNPs, rather than medical applications. One senior researcher speculates that structuring the project as five divisions probably stems from demands by the five ministries to appoint a division leader each.

The success of the project will depend on researchers' ability to overcome bureaucracy and integrate their research. But many are hopeful that they can do this, and enthusiastic about the government's recent push into SNPs research (see Nature 399, 295; 1999).

Masaaki Terada of the National Cancer Institute believes that researchers will coordinate their efforts to avoid doubling up on research projects. “They are competitive, but they do not want to waste their time doing the same thing as someone else.”