Welcome (English)

Welcome to the website of the 38th Congress of the DDS Society.

The theme of this year's conference, “不 (fu)”, which is a Japanese prefix indicating a negation, may sadly not need much explanation in these challenging times.

My experience as a clinician early in my career has had a profound effect on how I think. Before going to the bedside, I expected things to go smoothly, thanks to the wisdom and knowledge of giants which I had learnt as a medical student. In practice, unfortunately, this is not always the case. In the clinic, we often see people afflicted by and suffering from various incurable, intractable, and/or unexplained diseases. I would like to collectively refer to situations such as these—indicated by the negations (in/un = “不 (fu)”)—as “issues”: situations that cannot be overcome with what we have and know, but which we would like to overcome nonetheless.

Progress in research and development is somewhat constrained by what we already have and know. However, we do have the liberty to deliberate and decide how and in which direction we would like to newly build and add. It is my wish that the participants of this conference each think about the “issues” that we face, and together discuss how we might best move forward.

The Japan DDS Society is one of the few societies in Japan that can bring together people across from various fields: industry, academia, and government, or medicine, pharmaceutical sciences, engineering, natural sciences, and so on. It is our hope that through a collaborative effort, we can together imagine and create a world in which we can better cope with or solve the “issues” we currently face.

This year’s conference will be held mostly online.
We understand there to be cons to online conferences, but, then again, if there is a downside, there also is an upside to everything. In the first place, with the unexpected spread of infectious diseases and the increasing threat and scale of natural disasters caused by climate change, we may simply no longer be able to carry on just as we have always done before. As such, one of our aims to hold this conference online is to explore, as much as possible, the pros of online conferences. A clear advantage of online conferences is that people can participate free of geographical barriers, so as long as they have an internet connection and the will to join. We think it is a great opportunity to connect with people to which you do not normally have easy access. We are thus currently organizing a program that makes the best of this advantage.

I hope that together we can diversify and deepen the encounters that take place during the conference, including those between “what is possible” and “what is necessary”, as well as encounters between people who would not have met otherwise. It is my hope that this conference serves to move us forward through the various “issues” that we face.

Mitsunobu R. Kano, MD, PhD
Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Biomedicine,
Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in Health Systems
Okayama University