Promotion of Technological Innovation Through Medicine-Engineering
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE QUARTERLY REVIEW No.22 / January 2007 1 Promotion of Technological Innovation through Medicine-Engineering Collaboration in Japan — Industry-Academia-Government Collaboration in OCT Technology as a Case Example — KIMIO TATSUNO Information and Communications Research Unit and materials [1, 2]. The country is already 1 Introduction equipped with a high technology development capacity, which is one of the requirements for The Third Science and Technology Basic satisfying the social need for developing medical Plan[1], initiated in fiscal year 2006, primarily equipment. Today, the global and Japanese emphasizes the importance of technological markets for medical equipment are estimated innovation. It also emphasizes the importance of as approximately twenty trillion yen and two interdisciplinary and consolidated research, also trillion yen, respectively. The values of Japanese emphasized in the previous term, and holds the imports and exports in this area were about the collaboration between medicine and engineering same in fiscal year 1992, but the value of imports to be a high-priority issue. has increased rapidly since then, reaching 955 In Japan, the rapid aging of the population billion yen in 2004 and far exceeding the value of and the declining birthrate will eventually exports (430 billion yen) for the same year[3]. create a serious social issue: the lack of a young In domestic and international road maps, the labor force. To address this issue, the “Revised development of molecular imaging technology is Law concerning Stabilization of Employment regarded as the next step after the completion of of Older Persons” was enacted in fiscal year the Human Genome Project, a step that should 2006, extending the mandatory retirement age contribute to the establishment of molecular to slow the reduction of the labor force and libraries and ultimately to the promotion of reduce national pension expenses. The success molecular therapy and preventive medicine[4, 5]. of this policy relies on the health and longevity The promotion of collaborative innovation of older people so that they can continue on the between medicine and engineering is crucial to job. Moreover, the maintenance of people’s good the implementation of this road map and should health, regardless of their age and sex, should be regarded as a top-priority issue in Japan. reduce the nation’s continuously increasing The present report focuses on OCT (Optical medical expenditure. Most of all, if we consider Coherence Tomography)[6], a growing technology the basics of life, to stay healthy, i.e. to be free of whose development illustrates the perils and diseases, is a fundamental need for anyone who promises of this trend. The first patent for such seeks to live a happy life. an invention was applied for in Japan by a local Over the past few decades, Japan university at the peak of the bubble economy in has maintained its strong international the late 1980s[7]. Even back then, the technology competitiveness as a nation excelling at gave a glimpse of its potential to create business “manufacturing things” such as automobiles, opportunities through its application to medical machinery, electric and electronic appliances equipment, but Europe and the U.S., although 11 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY TRENDS QUARTERLY REVIEW No.22 / January 2007 latecomers in OCT invention, have unfortunately competitive environment, promotion of science, gone far ahead of us in commercialization of the and creation of persistent innovations through technology. strategic investment; and removal of systematic or In Japan, the Law for Promoting University-Industry operational obstacles to return the R&D benefits Technology Transfer (TLO law) went into force to society. Science and technology has a mission in 1998. The Third Science and Technology Basic to address a broad range of these policy issues for Plan[1], approved at a Cabinet meeting in March the next five years,” emphasizing the importance 2006, notes that “S&T system reforms enabled of evaluating success in terms of concrete results. steady progress in industry-academia-government From these standpoints, this report focuses collaboration such as: increase in the numbers of on the application of OCT to ophthalmic industry-academia joint research, technology diagnostic imaging systems and chronologically transfers by technology licensing organizations compares its developmental process in Japan (TLOs), and university-derived ventures (the total and in western countries, from its invention to number of such ventures has reached 1,000),” and its commercialization. Moreover, this report that “in order for the activities of industry-academ introduces the attempt of industry-academia-g ia-government collaboration to achieve sufficient overnment cooperation in Japan to recover the results, it is necessary to further revitalize the initiative, not only in first-generation but also in activities of university intellectual property second- and third-generation OCT technology, centers and TLOs and make them more effective,” and proposes some measures to promote suggesting that measures for promoting university collaborative innovation between medicine and startups have already been taken. However, if engineering in Japan. such measures had been taken a decade earlier, i.e. before the bubble economy in late 1980s, 2 Principles underlying OCT and the significance of public investment in and the course of technological innovation had been recognized its development earlier, Japan would have had an advantage over Europe and the U.S. in the development and 2-1 Principles underlying OCT commercial exploitation of medical equipment. OCT is a technology derived from the Given these situations, we have reaffirmed Michelson interferometer, and its mechanism is the significance of the TLO Law and recognized roughly described in Figure 1[6]. The light source the necessity of examining the current and is a current-injection type semiconductor light future state of technology development in Japan, source called an SLD (Super Luminescent Diode), i.e. whether the development of technology which is an infrared light with a wavelength of (including OCT) synchronizes with the trend of around 780 nm, 830 nm, 1.3 µm or 1.5 µm that technology transfer promotion and whether there is any obstacle to its future progress. Moreover, as Sample Reference mirror scanning is pointed out by the Ministry of Health, Labour Scanning and Welfare[8], we need to expose any operational Reference beam problems in the clinical trial system or other Surface systems related to the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law that are part of the approval process for new Object medical equipment products, as such problems beam SLD light Beam may demotivate entrepreneurs and ultimately source splitter Sample impair Japan’s global competitiveness in medical interior equipment development. The Third Science and Technology Basic Photodetector Plan[1] envisions that “the core strategies are: development of human resources who can Figure 1 : Mechanism of OCT produce excellent research findings, creation of a Prepared by the STFC based on Reference[6] 12 13 SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY TRENDS QUARTERLY REVIEW No.22 / January 2007 Macula lutea the use of a light source with lower temporal coherence gives a higher depth resolution. This is the key to this invention, and the depth resolution can be 10-20 µm, depending on the spectral bandwidth (about 50 nm) of the light source. 2-2 Process of development in Japan The first patent on the principle of OCT was applied for in 1990 by Naohiro Tanno, who Optic disc was then a Professor at Yamagata University[7]. Figure 2 : Example of a retinal tomogram taken by OCT An application was filed only for a Japanese Photograph provided by Microtomography Co., Ltd. patent and not for a U.S. or any other foreign patent. Meanwhile, the first research paper on can penetrate 1-2 mm deep into a living body and OCT, titled “Backscattering Optical Heterodyne that has a sufficiently high spatial coherence but Tomography”[9] was prepared for the 14th Laser a low temporal coherence. The beam is divided Sensing Symposium in 1991, and was written in in two by a beam splitter; the transmitted beam Japanese and not in English. This reminds us of reaches the surface of the test sample, enters the the famous story of Koichi Tanaka, the winner of test sample and is reflected or scattered by any the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 2002. Since Mr. scattering object or by any boundary between Tanaka had never published any paper in English materials with different refractive indices. This except for one that he wrote for a symposium reflected or scattered beam returns to the beam held in China, his research had not received splitter, where it is reflected to the photodetector much international attention until he won the as the object beam. Meanwhile, the beam initially Prize. In earlier times, researchers did not have reflected by the beam splitter is reflected by the enough funds to publicize their discoveries to reference mirror surface, passes through the the world or to claim their intellectual property splitter this time and reaches the photodetector rights, and the importance of publishing research interfering with the object beam based on the papers in English is here reacknowledged. superposition principle. At that time, Professor Tanno was one of When the path lengths (the distance traveled the key members of Biophotonics Information by the individual beams after being divided by Laboratories, Ltd. (capitalized by the former the beam splitter until being combined again) of Ministry of International Trade and Industry) the object and reference beams are equal to each led by Humio Inaba, who was then a professor other (i.e. at zero path-length difference), the at Tohoku University. The project was launched two waves intensify each other, and the intensity by researchers who were inspired by the idea of the light received by the photodetector is of X-ray CT (Computer Tomography (theory greater than when the path-length difference by Allan Cormack, apparatus by Godfrey is not zero.