肺癌におけるトランスレーショナルリサーチの現状と日本のアカデミアにおけるトランスレーショナルリサーチの展望と課題

Translational research (TR) has been recognized in the United States since the mid-1990s and plays an important role in the development of new drugs. In Japan, a program to promote TR support was established by the Ministry of Education in 2007, and full-scale efforts are now underway. The main player in TR is academia, and the key to success is how to convert promising seeds produced in academia to practical use. Over the last 20 years, lung cancer has been the cancer type that has benefited most from TR in the medical field, with the discovery of various driver oncogenes and development of molecular-targeted therapeutic agents and immune checkpoint inhibitors. This is a great achievement of TR. Unfortunately, however, although a number of promising seeds have been identified in academia in Japan, many of the associated drugs have been developed overseas because of the lack of an academia support system for such seeds in Japan and the lack of development capabilities in Japanese pharmaceutical companies. This has resulted in a current situation in which the benefits of TR are not fully returned to Japan. In the future, a number of new drug modalities centering on biopharmaceuticals are expected to appear, but it is important to develop these modalities based on a steady strategy.