Foreword

In recent years, the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (PSJ) has hosted an International Symposium for Medicinal Sciences (ISMS), with pharmaceutical company researchers being encouraged to participate in the annual meeting of PSJ in order to create a close international relationship with researchers interested in the medicinal sciences. The first, second and third ISMS were held during the 135th, 136th and 137th PSJ annual meetings in Kobe, Yokohama and Sendai, respectively. The fourth ISMS, including two invited lectures by Prof. Erick M. Carreira of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and Prof. Vincent M. Rotello of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, as well as 43 invited poster presenters, was organized during the 138th PSJ annual meeting in Kanazawa in 2018. Prof. Carreira presented a lecture about “Recent Developments in Strategies and Tactics towards Complex Secondary Metabolites Including Human-Derived Natural Products”, and Prof. Rotello introduced recent advances in the “Interfacing Nanomaterials with Biology: From Delivery of siRNA and CRISPR Machinery to Rapid Cell Phenotyping.” We also called for active contributions from invited lecturers and poster presenters during the 4th ISMS. For the Current Topics section in the Chemical and Pharmaceutical Bulletin and Biological and Pharmaceutical Bulletin (BPB), we have assembled seventeen contributions. In this issue of the BPB we have published six reviews, including contributions from the invited lecture by Prof. Rotello, and one regular article which covers the entire drug discovery field including cell biology, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, and regulatory sciences.

The first review, entitled “Advances in CRISPR/Cas9 Technology for in Vivo Translation” is by Prof. Rotello and his colleagues, an invited speaker at the 4th ISMS. This review describes advances in the latest in vivo clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) delivery strategies, including highlights of challenges yet to be overcome.

In the second review, “Pharmaceutical Research for Inherited Metabolic Disorders of the Liver Using Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell and Genome Editing Technologies” by Prof. Mizuguchi, Dr. Takayama and their colleagues, they examine the use of patient iPS cell-derived hepatocyte-like cells for drug efficacy evaluation and drug screening, as well as genome editing technology allowing for the generation of functionally recovered hepatocyte cells in vivo.

“Applications of Liposomal Drug Delivery Systems to Develop Neuroprotective Agents for the Treatment of Ischemic Stroke”, the third review by Dr. Fukuta, Prof. Oku and their colleagues, describes a variety of isochemic stroke treatments using liposomal DDS technologies, as well as recent advances in the field including the authors’ contribution.

“Utility of Chimeric Mice with Humanized Liver for Predicting Human Pharmacokinetics in Drug Discovery: Comparison with in Vitro–in Vivo Extrapolation and Allometric Scaling” is contributed by Dr. Naritomi and his colleagues as the forth review. In this review, the authors summarize human PK prediction methods using in vitro–in vivo extrapolation (IVIVE), allometric scaling, and chimeric mice with humanized liver, and then discuss the utility of predicting human PK in drug discovery by comparing these chimeric mice with IVIVE and allometric scaling.

In the fifth review, “Recent Advances in Liquid Biopsy in Precision Oncology Research” by Dr. Sato and his colleagues, a deeper understanding of circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) biology, including more advanced analytical technology of ctDNA for practical application in an invasive test for cancer is discussed.

The sixth review, “Adeno Associated Virus (AAV) as a Tool for Clinical and Experimental Delivery of Target Genes into the Mammalian Retina” by Prof. Koike and her colleagues, describes the tropism of recombinant AAV (rAAV) for various types of mammalian retinal neurons in relation to capsid serotype and administration method, including the authors’ recent findings regarding an AAV serotype that specifically infects mouse cone photoreceptors.

One regular article, entitled “Prediction of Human Hepatic Clearance for Cytochrome P450 Substrates via a New Culture Method Using the Collagen Vitrigel Membrane Chamber and Fresh Hepatocytes Isolated from Liver Humanized Mice” is by Dr. Watari and his colleagues. This article indicates that a novel long-term culture method for PXB-cells^® using a collagen vitrigel membrane (CVM) chamber is a promising in vitro system for predicting human hepatic CL with high accuracy for CYP substrates, including metabolically stable drug candidates.

I believe that these reviews and articles provide useful information for progress in the medicinal sciences, and sincerely thank all authors for their significant contributions.