Message from the Chairman of the IRPA

We are very pleased to make our official announcement that we have founded a non-profit research organization, “the Institute for Research on Productive Aging (IRPA)”.  On behalf of all executive board members, I, the Chairman of the IRPA, would like to express our sincere gratitude to everybody who has provided support and give a brief outline of our new organization.  “Productive Aging” aims to enable everyone, particularly the elderly, to maintain their physical and mental health as long as possible and allow them to have a “productive life” to enjoy their personal lives and contribute to our society as much as possible.  The IRPA has been founded to advance our understanding of aging and longevity and achieve “Productive Aging”.

The objectives of the IRPA are: 1) to promote and conduct scientific research to elucidate the mechanisms of aging and longevity at cellular, tissue, and organismal levels, 2) to develop anti-aging interventions based on these scientific foundations and translate these findings to our society, and 3) to make significant contributions to the health and happiness of the mankind by providing solutions to populational aging and promoting healthspan in Japan and all other countries throughout the globe.

To achieve these goals, the IRPA has already opened our laboratory in the Kobe Port Island in April, 2020.  Currently, we are planning to establish four scientific departments within the IRPA: 1) Department of Aging and Longevity Science and Medicine, which aims to understand the basic mechanisms of aging and longevity, 2) Department of Life-Course Biology and Medicine, which investigates causal relationships between various life-course events and age-associated diseases, 3) Department of Immunology and Cancer Biology, which studies the mechanisms of age-associate decline in the immune system and develops interventions to counteract such functional decline, and 4) Department of Systems Biology and Big-Data Medicine, which analyzes the process of aging as a systemic event and predicts age-associated events through the analysis of big data.

The IRPA also aims to develop nutraceutical and pharmaceutical seed compounds that are proven to show anti-aging effects, diagnostics for aging based on new technologies, preventive and therapeutic interventions based on our understanding of new disease mechanisms.  The IRPA has collaborative research efforts with other companies, providing scientific consultation to them, and promotes scientific literacy to achieve “Productive Aging”.

Recently, the situation around academic science in our country has been becoming increasingly more difficult.  Therefore, to continuously support and nurture our competitive capability of science, we strongly believe that it is important to create a new mechanism with various, significant help from different sectors in Japan.  This realization motivated us to have founded the IRPA.  The IRPA’s effort is just a model.  Nonetheless, we sincerely hope that our efforts in the IRPA will be able to encourage other researchers to gather their own wisdom, intellect, and effort and start their own endeavors for the future of science in this country.

Lastly, to achieve “Productive Aging” in the near future, the IRPA would like to establish a consortium of supporting companies and individuals and rigorously expand all our activities.  We would greatly appreciate having your favorable understanding and strong, continuous support to our new non-profit research organization IRPA.  Thank you very much.

Yo-ichi Nabeshima, M.D., Ph.D.
Chairman of the IRPA

Board of Directors

Yo-ichi Nabeshima, M.D., Ph.D.Chairman

Director
Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation
Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation at Kobe
Professor Emeritus
Kyoto University

Hiroaki Kitano, PhD.Executive Board Member

Professor
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
President
The Systems Biology Institute

Shin-ichiro Imai, M.D., Ph.D.Executive Board Member

Invited Chief Scientist
Laboratory of Molecular Life Science
Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation
Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation at Kobe

Professor
Department of Developmental
Biology
Department of Medicine (Joint)
Washington University School of Medicine 

Ryuji Hiramatsu, Ph.D.
Executive Board Member

Director
Department of Industry-Academia Collaborative Research
Institute of Biomedical Research and Innovation
Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation at Kobe

Kyota Moriyama
Auditor

Accountant(CPA)
Moriyama Kyota Tax and Accounting Office

International Scientific Advisory Board

• Chairman of the BoardHiroaki Kitano, PhD.
  Professor
  Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University
  President
  The Systems Biology Institute, Tokyo, Japan
• MemberShigekazu Nagata, Ph.D.
  Professor
  Immunology Frontier Research Center
  Osaka University, Osaka, Japan
• 　Shuh Narumiya, M.D., Ph.D.
  Project Professor and Director
  Medical Innovation Center
  Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto, Japan
• 　Masashi Yanagisawa, M.D., Ph.D.
  Professor and Director
  International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine, The University of Tsukuba,
  Tsukuba, Japan
• 　Adam Antebi, Ph.D.
  Director
  Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing
  Cologne, Germany
• 　Brian Kennedy, Ph.D.
  Distinguished Professor
  Departments of Biochemistry and Physiology
  Director
  Centre for Healthy Ageing
  National University of Singapore, Singapore
• 　Cynthia Kenyon, Ph.D.
  Vice President
  Aging Research, Calico, San Francisco, Calinornia, USA
• 　Jing-Dong “Jackie” Han, Ph.D.
  Professor
  Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences
  Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies
  Peking University, Beijing, China
• 　Leonard P.Guarente,Ph.D.
  Novartis Professor of Biology
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology,Cambridge, USA
• 　Linda Partridge, D.Phil.
  Director
  Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing
  Biological Secretary and Vice-President
  TheRoyal Society, London, UK
• 　Thomas Rando, M.D., Ph.D.
  Professor
  Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences
  Director, The Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging
  Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, USA

Organization

History

• March 2019Institute for Research on Productive Aging was established.
  The head office is located in Kobe.
• September 2019Inauguration of International Scientific Advisory Board
• October 2019Planning　the Inaugural International Symposium on Aging Research　(ISAR)
• April 20203 new researchers joined IRPA.