In 2023, we finally entered what I cautiously call “post-IVCOVID times”. Many aspects of research have returned to “normal”, including the freedom to attend international conferences in person. On the other hand, the pandemic has negatively impacted the economy, making travel abroad expensive, especially for young researchers. Fortunately, some scientific meetings, including those within RIKEN, are still being held over Zoom, which could continue to be a convenient option for the research community in the post-pandemic era.In 2023, the institute held the first in-person IMS Sym-posium since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Under the theme of biomedical science, presenters – including two invited foreign speakers (one participating over Zoom) – highlighted the significance of biomedical sciences as a data science to an audience of more than 150 participants. Additionally, the IMS-Japanese Society for Immunology (JSI) International Symposium on Immunology, which was postponed during the COVID-19 pandemic, was held again at Tokyo. The attendance was larger than expected (over 320 participants), which enhanced the lively discus-sions across the diverse field of immunology.IMS also hosted the second Advisory Council (AC) meeting of this seven-year mid-term in 2023. The AC members were pleasantly surprised by the remarkable de-gree of interdisciplinary research being conducted at IMS, which has already produced much fruitful data. Such col-laboration across departmental boundaries is a major shift from the divisional structure of the newly established IMS at the last AC meeting in 2019. With the support of the AC members, we proposed to continue this collaborative effort under the four main pillars of Human Immunity, Genetic and Environment Factors in Non-coding Regions, Organ Interactions and Systems Biology, and Advancement of Medical Applications of Research Findings. These pillars will facilitate our commitment to conduct basic scientific research and translate the findings for the benefit of society. As evidence of this, IMS researchers once again pub-lished numerous high-impact studies, several of which have important implications for patients. For example, Hi-roshi Ohno and his team’s comprehensive multi-omics ap-proach to study the intestinal metabolome and microbiome led to the identification of key bacterial species that can reduce insulin resistance. Yukihide Momozawa’s team built upon their genome-wide association study from last year to identify new variants involved in gastric cancer. Even more importantly, they discovered a significant interaction between these variants and H. pylori infection in Japanese individuals that increases the risk of gastric cancer by over 45%. The findings from both of these studies empower patients by providing strategies that could prevent progres-sion to more serious disease.In the past year, we have witnessed remarkable tech-nological advances, particularly in generative artificial intelligence (AI). Tools like ChatGPT, which has become readily available to the general public, have the potential to significantly impact research. Their applications can span the practical, such as writing papers and data analysis, to the educational, allowing us to quickly and efficiently learn new skills and concepts across a wide range of scientific domains. However, these benefits come with concerns, particularly surrounding ethics. As these technologies be-come more pervasive, it is becoming more crucial to care-fully consider and address the potential risks and ethical implications associated with their application.The rise in these and other technologies is relevant to Kaori Muto, Team Leader of the Laboratory for Biomedical Ethics and Co‐design, who we welcomed to IMS in 2023. Muto and her team are dedicated to understanding bioeth-ics in life biomedical sciences. The focus on ethics concern-ing human research subjects is becoming increasingly nec-essary in biomedical research institutes with advances in analytical methods related to genomics. The large volumes of data generated by these analyses have raised questions around the ethics of managing such data. Investigations into the best ways to address these issues will be integral to enhancing research in 2024 and beyond.Kazuhiko YamamotoDirectorRIKEN Center for Integrative Medical SciencesDirector’s Report
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