The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Council for Science and Technology and Research Environment Subcommittee released their preliminary evaluation (report) in November 2022. Keeping in mind the evaluation’s results and points of interest, Soka University, the Tokai National Higher Education and Research System (Nagoya University and Gifu University), and the National Institute of Natural Sciences are the implementing organizations, taking the lead in starting the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s first “Large-Scale Academic Frontier Promotion Project” in the life sciences field, known as the “Human Glycome Atlas Project” (HGA). (Representative: Tokai National Higher Education and Research System’s Director Kenji Kadomatsu)

Together with nucleic acids and proteins, glycans are indispensable for living organisms, often called “The Third Chain of Life”. With the cooperation of the three institutions listed above, this project hopes to bring the first comprehensive information on glycans to the whole world thanks to Japan’s collective effort. Forging ahead with unveiling its biological functions, they hope to make the results useful for various research areas, starting with medicine.

On Thursday 16th February, there was a press conference with the three institutions at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s press conference room. Soka University’s Chairperson of the Board of Trustees Yasunori Tashiro said, “This project follows a plan that involves cooperation between the National University Corporation, the Inter-University Research Institute Corporation, and the Private Universities Corporation. We plan to use the experience our university has fostered in combined research and research materials in order to understand the biological functions of glycans.”