Hiromichi Yaju Chair	Rick Weisburd Vice Chair	Paul E. Cizdziel Vice Chair

The Biosciences Subcommittee (i) provides up-to-date information about academic research, government funding and strategy, novel tools and techniques as well as investment opportunities in the life sciences, (ii) brings together individuals with common interest in the biotechnology and biosciences, such as researchers and business people who may not otherwise have a convenient common venue, and (iii) seeks to offer input into the government decision-making process on academic and industry funding

Information sharing

Biotechnology and biosciences industries tend to be extremely information dependent, so this is likely to be the primary activity of the subcommittee. The information is presented by inviting well informed speakers to make presentation on subjects of interest, including:

• Cutting-edge academic research (TLOs and/or researchers)
• Government funding priorities and strategies
• Translation research (moving from lab to industry)
• Novel tools and techniques
• Biotechnology startups

Networking

By bringing together individuals and companies with shared interests we build a community and stimulate information sharing between participants. More specifically, one of the primary objectives is to stimulate networking between researchers and business people. Japan is a leader in life-science research, but it lags other developed nations in its ability to move from basic research to commercial products. This would indicate that there may exist significant opportunities to commercialize research coming out of Japanese laboratories.

Advocacy

A significant portion of sales by biotechnology companies are made to entities partially or wholly financed by the government. It is therefore possible that the subcommittee could get involved in offering opinions and Viewpoint recommendations to promote a more efficient allocation of government resources that would contribute to improvement and diversification of Japanese economy. Possible Viewpoint recommendations may cover broad policy outlines or may focus on specific standards or critical areas of regulatory harmonization as deem timely and appropriate by subcommittee members.