Research center for medicine-engineering collaboration

The Center's vision for the future

To date, basic medical engineering research has involved developing physiological environment control and functional response detection technologies, primarily at the cellular level. We plan to establish new research methods to expand into multiple scales, ranging from the molecular level to the tissue level, to examine three-dimensional cellular clusters. This marks a new direction in research in the field of mechanobiology and in work to comprehensively elucidate cellular response and tissue remodeling, work previously done at the level of phenomenology. This will likely lead to academic spinoffs and the potential for dramatic impact. Academic spinoffs are also expected to include the development of new medical devices and biomaterials in the field of clinical medicine, achieved by combining nano/microprocessing, materials processing, and mechanobiology, generating in turn considerable potential for entirely new devices and materials. They also offer promise for improving basic examination technologies for clinical medicine and new drug development.

As one example, artificial joints have traditionally been associated with concerns related to the uncontrollable effects of the presence of foreign matter in the human body. Future research on artificial joints based on stem cell therapy will make it possible to create artificial joints using the patient’s own cells. These safer and more useful biomaterials will dramatically change the future both for today’s younger generation and for those older.

Our goal is to do work that turns the cogs of integrated medical and engineering research, previously considered an area fraught with challenges, to achieve innovations in both fundamental medical engineering and clinical medicine—and thereby to improve QOL.