Message from the Director of FIOC

In seeking innovation in cancer medicine (including preventive/ pro-active medicine), it is increasingly critical to deploy a collaborative team, i.e., partnership, among a battery of stakeholders, not to mention the patients, families, citizens and governments, but also diverse specialties in the medicine, sciences and technologies, ranging from academia to the industrial sectors.

Examples of the cases, when we seek research partners include：

• I am a clinician. I wish to have answers to my clinical questions, which I encounter in my daily practice.
• We are clinical investigators, planning a clinical trial. We would like to integrate a molecular correlative study in the clinical trial to explore the mechanism of the drug resistance.
• We are researchers in a pharmaceutical company. We would like to analyze clinical samples and information accumulated in NCC to develop drugs. In doing so, we also wish to have close and frequent discussion and exchange information with the basic and clinical research specialists in NCC.
• We are epidemiologists, planning a population cohort study. We would like to search biomarkers for the carcinogen exposure and disease risk stratification.
• I am a young PI (principal investigator) in the Research Institute. I would like to try an assay, which I found in a journal, to advance our research to the next stage.

It is a challenge for any world cancer research institutions how to develop a strong scheme to create contacts among diverse fields of scientists based on their mutual respects and to promote active and productive team sciences. FIOC is one of the current answers by the NCC Research Institute.

The basic concepts of FIOC is illustrated in the top page of FIOC：

As shown in the figure, FIOC is positioned between the Research Institute and both Hospitals and Center for Public Health Sciences. FIOC would participate actively in diverse types of research in the basic, clinical and public health sciences, but a particular emphasis would be on the TR (translational research) from basic to clinical sciences and reverse TR from the bed to bench in the therapeutic and diagnostic development. In particular, the activities of FIOC would be coordinated closely with those by EPOC (Exploratory Oncology Research & Clinical Trial Center) in the NCC organization. It should be also stressed that research involving academia-industry collaborations and cooperation is one of the core agenda of FIOC.

FIOC is a virtual center consisting of 15 Divisions and Departments and offers core facility functions as partner researchers, who thinks discussion is a crucial part of the partnership. FIOC also provides administrative and maintenance service for the NCC biobank.

There seems to be a mega-trend that would turn the medical and life sciences into the realm of the big sciences, in which AI would play a significant role. However, there have been ample examples, in which each individual investigator takes a little time to face each other, show mutual interest and transformed the world by putting their hands together. FIOC wishes to create such contacts and keep generating a number of new and promising research through the coming age.