Animal welfare and use of silkworm as a model animal.

Sacrificing model animals is required for developing effective drugs before being used in human beings. In Japan today, at least 4,210,000 mice and other mammals are sacrificed to a total of 6,140,000 per year for the purpose of medical studies. All the animals treated in Japan, including test animals, are managed under control of "Act on Welfare and Management of Animals". Under the principle of this Act, no person shall kill, injure, or inflict cruelty on animals without due cause. "Animal" addressed in the Act can be defined as a "vertebrate animal". If we can make use of invertebrate animals in testing instead of vertebrate ones, that would be a remarkable solution for the issue of animal welfare. Furthermore, there are numerous advantages of using invertebrate animal models: less space and small equipment are enough for taking care of a large number of animals and thus are cost-effective, they can be easily handled, and many biological processes and genes are conserved between mammals and invertebrates. Today, many invertebrates have been used as animal models, but silkworms have many beneficial traits compared to mammals as well as other insects. In a Genome Pharmaceutical Institute's study, we were able to achieve a lot making use of silkworms as model animals. We would like to suggest that pharmaceutical companies and institutes consider the use of the silkworm as a model animal which is efficacious both for financial value by cost cutting and ethical aspects in animals' welfare.

Intellectual property strategies for university spinoffs in the development of new drugs.

We will explain a new business model for university spinoffs involving the development of two types of products. The first are highly innovative, such as new drugs, while the second are typically less difficult to develop, such as functional foods. It is our belief that development of the second type of product can help solve the financial problems and stabilize management of Academic Start-ups. The key to development of several different types of products is accumulation of knowledge consisting not only of technical knowhow, e.g. tips for use in injection, but also ideas obtained by researchers with the potential for future applications. Examination of the features of venture enterprises which have arisen from universities suggests that inventors, who are also professors, should participate in such start-ups.