Tokyo Tech joins hands with Kawasaki City for drug discovery

Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and Kawasaki City are combining forces to conduct R&D, construct an infrastructure, and implement a business promotion programme for the "Program to Industrialize an Innovative Middle Molecule Drug Discovery Flow through Fusion of Computational Drug Design and Chemical Synthesis Technology".

This highly unique programme incorporates computational drug design methods into the field of drug discovery for middle molecules. The programme fuses computational drug design that utilizes molecular simulation and machine learning by the Super Computer TSUBAME of Tokyo Tech and unique chemical synthesis technology such as artificial peptides and artificial nucleic acids.

Through industry-academia-government partnerships including corporations in Kawasaki City, the programme seeks to form an innovation ecosystem that bridges basic and fundamental research and the drug discovery business, thus dramatically improving the efficiency of developing middle molecule drugs.

In order to implement this research project, the Middle Molecule IT-based Drug Discovery Laboratory (MIDL) will be opened this fiscal year in Tonomachi KING SKYFRONT, an international strategic zone located in Kawasaki City. MIDL will possess enhanced research functions for middle molecules and will be the world's first dedicated facility in this field with state-of-the-art computational approaches. Tokyo Tech will also open a Middle Molecule IT-based Drug Discovery Laboratory (MIDL) core facility inside the university campus and establish a system in which faculty cooperate across research fields.