Annual Report 2019

Department of Strategic Programs

Yoshikatsu Koga

Introduction

 In order to deploy various medical seeds from the Exploratory Oncology Research & Clinical Trial Center (EPOC) to the world, integration with the research divisions of EPOC is necessary. Improving the quality of research in both core facilities and each research division of EPOC is required. The Department of Strategic Programs manages common laboratories/core facilities of EPOC and an appropriate quality control system for human clinical samples at EPOC. EPOC aims to be a high-quality world-class TR center by performing appropriate quality control of experimental facilities (hardware) and education for researchers (software).

The Team and What We Do

• EPOC research projects
  - Definition of the EPOC projects: 1) Research managed by the Department of Strategic Programs of EPOC, and 2) Research composed of multiple basic and clinical departments.
  - Requirements for the EPOC projects: 1) Clarify the clinical derivation, including clinical research, 2) Aim to deploy the basic and clinical results to companies, and 3) Clarify the research period and achievement goals.
  In FY2019, “Project for Resistance to Cancer Therapies”, “Project for Medical Device Development”, and “Project for Co-clinical Trials” started.
• Management of clinical samples
  The sample support team started to manage human clinical samples collected in the National Cancer Center Hospital East (NCCHE) and EPOC (Kashiwa) in FY2017. In FY2019, we established a central management system which can manage the work from collection to processing and storage of human clinical samples. Under this management system, we have started to accept new human clinical samples.

Education

 Various lectures, such as lectures on animal experiments, gene recombination experiments, biohazard/chemohazard experiments, and human clinical samples, were held as education for researchers.

Future prospects

 The Department of Strategic Programs manages and supports the research in each division of EPOC as a common department of EPOC.