Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 50th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : June 19, 2023 - June 21, 2023
Under the supervision of Dr. Yuzo Hayashi at the Pathology Division of National Institute of Health Sciences (NIHS), I participated in the rodent carcinogenesis studies, followed by so-called signal toxicity, Percellome Toxicogenomics Project, and nanomaterials toxicity studies under the support of Dr. Tohru Inoue through Dr. Satoshi Kitajima at the Molecular and Cellular Toxicology Division, NIHS. During that period, I was also involved in the OECD/EDTA, WHO/IPCS, WHO/IARC, EU-Horizon 2020 and other international academic activities such as ASIATOX and IUTOX.
Dr. Yuzo Hayashi’s project was, along with Dr. Takashi Sugimura of National Cancer Center and Dr. Nobuyuki Ito of Nagoya City University, Japanese version of NTP, generating 2-year rodent carcinogenesis study data. Dr. Hayashi used to say that “Even in broken English, when Japan raised hand for comment, all other participant kindly listened carefully expecting some meaningful contents”. I myself experienced when I was assigned to the lead lab for the development of OECD TG440, that having our original data with our interpretation was a strong propelling force for the project.
In terms of IUTOX, initially I was not attracted by its meeting ICT, but had to get involved when Dr. Inoue became the Vice President and passed along to me quite suddenly.
To make a long story short, International Cooperative Relationships results in the following situation. When you need to know something internationally, you know someone in many countries who you can call directly, e-mail or meet remotely. And those people can introduce you someone more appropriate in that country or region. The core is the human relationships!
Covid-19 had forced us to use more Web meetings. Recently Dr. Ghosh of SBI (https://www.sbi.jp/index.htm) taught me an interesting distinction between communication and connection. Web meeting is good for “communication” that is an exchange of data, whereas it is not good for “making connection” among people.
ASIATOX was initiated by 5 societies, Japan, Korea, Thai, Taiwan and China. In the Executive Committee, Taiwan and China sits next to each other. In IUTOX, when two societies from a certain country was not in good mood, I told such story and managed to make them relaxed.
In my award lecture, by showing snapshots taken so far, I would be happy to convey some idea of the current international situation.
