Keio University School of Medicine is focusing its efforts on translational research, a far-sighted approach that embodies founder Yukichi Fukuzawa's scientific philosophy of combining of the basic medical sciences and clinical science. The school is also expanding extramural joint research, which aligns with School of Medicine founder Shibasaburo Kitasato's desire to establish close cooperation between basic and clinical medical fields, "which shall unite us as one family."
The Institute of Integrated Medical Research building stands at the center of Keio's biomedical research activity. The Center for Integrated Medical Research is involved in the development of a wide range of integrated studies, with the goal of passing on the results to the rest of society. The Research Park lends out space for fixed-term research projects, and is a hub for strategic, integrated research units, drawing from multiple discipline pairs: basic and clinical, undergraduate and graduate, academic and industrial, institutional and national. The core basic/clinical medicine classes promote advanced genetics and strategic cell science research. This is all supported by cutting-edge facilities and professional staff, operating under the umbrella of the shared research/collaboration hub Keio-Med Open Access Facility.
As private university subsidies and national university operating subsidies continue to decrease, obtaining competitive funding is becoming necessary not only for accomplishing research, but also for maintaining a school's educational infrastructure. The wide range of funding that Keio University School of Medicine receives is a testament to its vigorous research activities.
Great accomplishments in medical research require quality equipment and facilities. The Shinanomachi Media Center (Kitasato Memorial Medical Library), RI Center, Laboratory Animal Center, and Core Instrumentation Facility Unit are all collaborative facilities with world-class research equipment.
The Shinanomachi Media Center (Kitasato Memorial Medical Library) is a historic medical library with a wealth of information resources. It also boasts a vast collection of electronic journals, with accessible life science journals now numbering over 10,000.
The Laboratory Animal Center is home to Japan's first bioBubble clean room, and houses specific-pathogen-free (SPF) mice and rats.
The Core Instrumentation Facility Unit is equipped with state of the art machinery, including confocal laser scanning microscopes, protein structure analyzers, microarrays, and next-generation sequencers. Specialized staff manage that machinery in addition to assorted general-purpose equipment. We also hold a wide range of seminars, and handle various analysis requests outsourced to Keio, meeting the diverse needs of researchers.
The Center for Clinical Research (CCR) was founded in 2006, and is responsible for overall operations and management of clinical research and trials at Keio. Keio University Hospital is the only healthcare facility in Japan designated by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) as a clinical trial core hospital, global clinical research center, and center for exploratory trials, and a new clinical trial ward was opened in 2013. As a leading clinical research organization, Keio CCR is constantly focused on promoting world-class clinical research.
Keio University School of Medicine encourages graduate study. In order to continually enrich our research environment, we are able to subsidize about half of tuition costs for doctoral students. We also provide scholarship for students who have elected to pursue our MD-PhD degree program.