On October 7, a ceremony was held in Tokyo to ink a trilateral agreement between the RIKEN Preventive Medicine & Diagnosis Innovation Program (PMI), Juntendo University Faculty of Medicine, and Kazan Federal University Institute of Fundamental Medicine and Biology, which is located in the Tatarstan Republic in Russia. Under the memorandum of understanding, the three institutions will cooperate in areas such as preventive medicine and advanced medicine, by sharing personnel, clinical samples, and information.

According to Yoshihide Hayashizaki, Program Director of RIKEN PMI, “Based on this memorandum of understanding, we plan to discover new biomarkers and create diagnostic tools based on them, and to make use of our partnership to put RIKEN’s basic research to use in responding to the needs for advanced medical systems at Juntendo University and in the Tatarstan Republic.”

On October 5, before the signing ceremony, a high-level 15 member delegation including President Rustam Minnikhanov of the Republic of Tatarstan, Kirov Oblast Governor Nikita Belykh, and Kazan Federal University Rector Ilshat Gafurov visited the RIKEN Yokohama campus. There, they were given an introduction to RIKEN by Executive Director Shigeharu Kato, followed by an introduction of PMI and a tour of the genetic analysis facilities at the RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies.