About Us
Drug Discovery Initiative, DDI, has been founded to contribute to the health of people through elucidation of the phenomena of life or development of orphan drugs as a hub of the national collaborative research network for drug discovery based on our public chemical library. We promote open innovation by providing consultation, technical assistance and chemical samples to the researchers who will begin chemical screening.
Contact Us
Drug Discovery Initiative, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences,
The University of Tokyo
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
Telephone: +81-3-5841-1960
Facsimile: +81-3-5841-1959
E-mail: ddiinfo
mol.f.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Member
| Director, | Hidenori Ichijo, D.D.S., Ph.D. | |
| Deputy Director, | Hirotatsu Kojima, Ph.D | |
| Professor, | Hiroyuki Miyachi, Ph.D. | (LEU) |
| Associate Professor, | Toru Iijima, Ph.D. | (LEU) |
| Associate Professor, | Kosuke Yasuda, Ph.D. | (LEU) |
| Lecturer, | Takuya Ikeda, Ph.D. | (LEU) |
| Lecturer, | Riyo Imamura, Ph.D. | |
| Lecturer, | Kayoko Kanamitsu, Ph.D. | (LEU) |
| Lecturer, | Mari Takamiya, Ph.D. | |
| Member, | Tomoko Futamata | |
| Member, | Tsukasa Hasegawa, M.S. | |
| Member, | Kiyoe Hayashi | |
| Member, | Chinatsu Honma, M.S. | |
| Member, | Yoshiko Inoue | (LEU) |
| Member, | Mayumi Ishii | (LEU) |
| Member, | Chie Coda | |
| Member, | Izumi Minegishi | |
| Member, | Junko Sasaki | (LEU) |
| Member, | Chie Sugita | (LEU) |
| Member, | Naoki Suto, Ph.D. | (LEU) |
| Member, | Natsue Taketa | |
| Member, | Eri Watanabe | (LEU) |
| Staff, | Zubeda Begum, Ph.D. | (LEU) |
| Staff, | Hazuki Tanaka, M.S. | |
| Visiting Professor, | Yoichi Kurebayashi, D.V.M., Ph.D. | (LEU) |
| Visiting Professor, | Takayoshi Okabe, Ph.D. |
Management Committee
Hidenori Ichijo, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Junken Aoki, Ph.D.
Hirotatsu Kojima, Ph.D.
Masayuki Miura, Ph.D.
Hiroyuki Miyachi, Ph.D.
Shigeo Murata, M.D., Ph.D.
Taisuke Tomita, Ph.D.
Yasuteru Urano, Ph.D.
Kosuke Yasuda, Ph.D.
Our Mission
Human genome analysis makes a great impact on the field of life sciences. The impact extends to organic synthetic chemistry and the phenomenon that was discussed at the clinical level previously has came to be discussed at the level of basic medicine, molecular biology and moreover the molecule including organic chemistry. The integrated research of organic chemistry, biology and medicine is demanded.
The development of a useful “synthetic small molecular compound regulating a biological function” has possibility to be equal to RNAi or knockout animal technology which is innovative in life science study, and could provide useful research tools. As the study of organic chemistry has developed highly now, design and synthesis of the organic compound in a logical, rational way is expected to come true. “The field of study to elucidate biological system with chemical techniques” is called Chemical Biology and actively performed these days mainly in the USA as a new field.
A public chemical library is the important study base for the development of “synthetic small molecular compound regulating a biological function”. By construction of the chemical library, it will be possible to find “a hit compound” regulating a biological function from more than 100,000 compounds in a short time. And then an optimization study to give selectivity and high potency to “a hit compound” comes to be performed, which is possible for the first time by making full use of the state of the art organic chemistry with structure analysis data of the protein and molecule design technology and will generate so-called “lead compound”. This “lead compound” is worth extremely high intellectual property.
The construction of the high quality chemical library is important in this process. However, there was not a public chemical library in Japan. On the other hand, organic synthetic chemistry research of Japanese Universities is at a high level worldwide, but most new synthetic compounds are hoarded up in university laboratories and not used enough as intellectual property.
Under such conditions, “Chemical Biology Research Initiative (CBRI)” was constructed in the University of Tokyo for the purpose of making use of intellectual properties of universities in industry and contributing to life science study. For the construction of CBRI, collaboration among study groups of organic synthetic chemistry is necessary and furthermore the support of life science laboratories is demanded for evaluating chemical library. CBRI collected compounds in the original way and build a storage/supply system. In 2011, the name of the organization was changed to “Open Innovation Center for Drug Discovery (OCDD)” in order to effectively connect universities’ intellectual property with industry. In 2015, the name of the organization was changed to “Drug Discovery Initiative (DDI).” DDI will support and accelerate academic drug discovery to contribute the Healthcare Policy of the Government. In 2022, DDI was reorganized as an affiliated organization of Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and will be more closely involved in the education and research of the Graduate School.
As shown in the schematic diagram, “synthetic compound regulating a biological function” will be created efficiently by promoting collaboration among research groups of different fields such as organic synthetic chemistry, medical science, analytical chemistry, biophysics and life science. Furthermore, various research groups in the university are expected to join this collaboration. DDI aims to promote coordination within the university and active collaboration with research community inside and outside the country.
Chemical Library
Screening Systems
Infrastructure
Providing Samples
Our Network
Since April 2017
Old Projects
