Top medical researchers from Kiel and Tokyo want to work more closely together

For many years, members of the Cluster of Excellence “Precision Medicine in Chronic Inflammation” (PMI) have been in close contact with colleagues from Tokyo. Scientists from Tokyo have supported the Kiel researchers in establishing innovative intestinal organoids in the laboratory as a model system for researching chronic intestinal inflammation. Since 2023, this exchange has also been regulated in the form of a cooperation agreement between the Faculty of Medicine at Kiel University (CAU) and Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU). On Thursday, October 10, 2024, representatives from both universities signed an extension to this agreement in the presence of Minister President Daniel Günther.

The core of the agreement is the intensification of cooperation with a focus on the promotion of so-called clinician scientists. These are doctors in further training who actively conduct research alongside their specialist training and are temporarily released from patient care duties as part of a structured program in order to free up time for their research projects. Several years ago, the Cluster of Excellence PMI and the Faculty of Medicine at Kiel University launched such clinician-scientist support programs. The Institute of Science Tokyo, which emerged from a merger of Tokyo Medical and Dental University and the Tokyo Institute of Technology, would also like to establish such a program and benefit from the experience and expertise of the Cluster of Excellence PMI and the CAU. One concrete goal is a future exchange of clinician scientists between Kiel and Tokyo.

“We have been in close scientific contact for more than 15 years, particularly with Professor Mamoru Watanabe from the TMDU in Tokyo. He is closely associated with the Cluster of Excellence PMI - and its predecessors - and has helped shape our Cluster,” says Cluster spokesperson Professor Stefan Schreiber. In recent years, there has been a broad exchange of methods and expertise, particularly supported by research stays by young researchers from Tokyo in Kiel. Such stays are to be increasingly facilitated and promoted in both directions in the future. 

Minister President Daniel Günther welcomed the signing of the memorandum, which is intended to further intensify the cooperation between the medical faculties of the Institute of Science Tokyo and the CAU: “With the CAU and the Institute of Science Tokyo, two highly ambitious institutions from Germany and Japan are cooperating. As the state of Schleswig-Holstein, we are very proud of this and support these plans, because only together can we better meet the global challenges of the future. This partnership and the even closer connection between research and practice is a major step towards further strengthening international cooperation in healthcare and at the same time a symbol of the friendship and shared values that unite our two countries.”

On the Kiel side, the CAU Vice President for Research, Scientific Infrastructure and Transfer, Professor Eckard Quandt, and the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Professor Joachim Thiery, signed the memorandum.  “We are aiming for an exchange of clinician scientists, in which the young researchers from Kiel and Tokyo will each spend several months of research and clinical time at the other location and thus receive important scientific impulses. All sides benefit equally from this: The clinician scientists personally, university medicine in Schleswig-Holstein as well as those from Tokyo,” emphasizes Prof. Thiery.

Professor Watanabe from the Institute of Science Tokyo, who has been instrumental in driving the collaboration with the Cluster of Excellence, is one of the pioneers in the development of so-called intestinal organoids and research with these models. Organoids are miniature versions of organs in a petri dish. In this novel method, stem cells from the respective organs, in this case intestinal tissue, are stimulated to grow so that they form 3D cell cultures. These organoids have many of the properties of the original organ. Members of the PMI Cluster of Excellence are using them to research chronic intestinal inflammation and the effectiveness of various drugs, for example. Professor Watanabe and his colleagues have played a decisive role in establishing their own organoid systems in the Kiel laboratories at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology (IKMB) at the CAU and the UKSH, thus significantly advancing the Cluster's research. The cooperation has resulted in several joint publications. In 2021, Prof. Watanabe also received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at the CAU.

The new agreement with the Institute of Science Tokyo is open to all medical disciplines and is intended to strengthen cooperation with Tokyo in all profile areas of the Faculty of Medicine in Kiel, i.e. in addition to inflammation medicine, also in oncology, neurosciences, biomaterial research and digital medical technology.