As we emerge from a second year of the COVID-19 IVpandemic, I am truly inspired by the resilient profes-sionals at RIKEN IMS. In spite of the challenges imposed by SARS-CoV-2 and its life-threatening variants, our re-searchers continued to make significant scientific advances that will benefit not only Japan but many regions around the world.With travel restrictions still preventing in-person inter-national collaborations in 2021, IMS expanded its efforts to take crucial scientific exchanges online. The 5th IMS-Stanford ISCBRM Joint Symposium and the RIKEN-Lux-embourg Scientific Symposium invited lively discussions from both our local and international colleagues. Continu-ing these interactions during this unpredictable time is paramount for both fostering bonds between IMS and our collaborators and inspiring scientific discovery.Locally, IMS hosted the inaugural RIKEN IMS Joint Mouse and Human Cell Atlas meeting. During the single-day event, close to 100 scientists congregated online to share valuable information on innovations and ideas to ad-vance single-cell research in mice and, ultimately, humans. RIKEN is proud to spearhead Asia’s efforts toward the Human Cell Atlas project, which aims to develop a refer-ence map of the diverse cell types in the human body. The RIKEN IMS Joint Mouse and Human Cell Atlas meeting will bolster the institute’s leading role in this initiative.IMS scientists continued to publish world-class research in 2021, including several in high-impact journals. Sidonia Fagarasan and colleagues’ discovery of a novel role for the well-known brain chemical GABA in the immune system, and Hiroshi Ohno and colleagues’ report on the influ-ence of the major metabolite acetate on specific intestinal bacteria, both of which were published in Nature, are just some examples. These studies are excellent reminders of the complexity of our body systems and the need to think outside the box to uncover the intricate underpinnings of our physiology.To further the institute’s capabilities, IMS received sev-eral substantial grants in 2021. These include funding from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development to conduct genome-wide sequencing of Japanese patients with dementia and to develop equipment for immuno-phenotype monitoring. IMS also received external funds to enhance the institute’s capacity to perform proteomic stud-ies, which will be an important complement to our already established strength in genomics and transcriptomics. This, together with novel lipidomic technologies being de-veloped by Makoto Arita’s team, will expand IMS’s breadth in multi-omics research.The emergence of COVID-19 in 2020 prompted several teams at IMS to contribute to the urgent need to under-stand and tackle this new threat. The institute’s focus on immunology, genomics, and human genetics places many of its laboratories in prime position to do so. In 2021, some of these studies began to bear fruit, as exemplified by Shin-ichiro Fujii and colleagues’ publication on memory im-mune killer T cells and their recognition of HLA-A24-the human leukocyte antigen commonly found in Japanese. A wide range of other projects are still underway, including work from Hidehiro Fukuyama’s team on vitamin D3 ad-juvants with potential applications in vaccines and several collaborative projects with the RIKEN Program for Drug Discovery and Medical Technology Platforms.The pandemic has also shone a light on numerous under-the-radar issues. Among these is the importance of human-derived samples in immunological research. My hope is that the innovative technologies and ideas emerg-ing from IMS laboratories will promote the integration of data- and hypothesis-driven science to propel a movement towards human-centred life science initiatives. Of course, human-based projects come with great responsibility to protect personal information. RIKEN will face the chal-lenge of building a secure cloud-computing system to store the monumental amounts of data to come; I hope IMS will play a major role in this endeavour.Although it is impossible to predict what 2022 will hold, my hope is that we will soon be able to safely recommence scientific meetings both locally and internationally. Such mixing of scientific minds is vital for promoting mutual understanding and collaboration to foster scientific discov-ery and fortify the excellent research at IMS.Kazuhiko YamamotoDirectorRIKEN Center for Integrative Medical SciencesDirector’s Report
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