Tokyo

Japan's main science policy-making body is expected to approve a new ten-year plan for promoting the life sciences later this month. The plan, by the Council for Science and Technology, puts particular emphasis on strengthening areas of research with possible medical applications.

The final draft of the plan, released on the Science and Technology Agency's website, calls for an approach that integrates the study of human genetics, brain science, cancer and developmental biology. It claims that these should focus not only on the molecular and cellular level, but also on the whole organism.

It also seeks more research into cancer, genetic diseases and diseases of the brain — reflecting the fact that Japan faces a steep increase in the number of old people early next century.

This is the twenty-fourth in a series of reports issued by the council, which is attached to the office of the prime minister but located in the Science and Technology Agency, since its foundation in 1959. The expert group responsible for drafting the document was led by Yoshitaka Nagai, director of the Mitsubishi Kasei Institute of Life Sciences south of Tokyo. He points out that genetic diseases provide a good example of the proposed integrated approach, as they demonstrate that the link between genotype and phenotype is not always straightforward, and that such diseases can seldom be fully understood through studies at the molecular or cellular level alone.

The report says Japan could open up a new economic frontier by developing medical, food and information industries based on life science research, as well as new electronic products such as biosensors and neurochips.

But it acknowledges many problems in Japan's present research environment — for example, Japan's comparatively low input of genome data to its databases. (The report notes that only about 10 per cent of the genome data at the DNA Database of Japan in Mishima is of Japanese origin and calls for greater output of such data by Japan.) It also highlights its lack of laboratory animals, in particular primates, for modelling human disease and testing new medical techniques.

The focus on biomedical research appears to mark a clear departure from the central role long given to molecular biology in the life sciences in Japan. According to Nagai, the report's conclusions are essential if humans are to be placed at the centre of life science research. “Reductionism has been an immensely powerful tool in biological research, but it is becoming clear that integrated approaches are needed at the moment,” he says.

The report points out that the US National Institutes of Health alone spend about ¥1,000 billion (US$8.8 billion) each year on life science research. It calls for an expansion of Japan's life science budget over the next ten years, but makes no specific financial recommendations.

Indeed, in the present climate of fiscal restraint, further large expansion of the life science budget seems unlikely, given that the government has already promised a marked increase in the budget for brain science (see, for example, Nature 385, 104; 1997). But, according to Kanji Fujiki, director of the office of life science promotion at the Science and Technology Agency, the report may help to “make more efficient use of existing resources”.