Japan is well advanced in plant genetics, and has made breakthroughs in rice genomics. The country is, however, lagging behind the USA on human genetics. Its contribution to the sequencing of the human genome by teams of researchers belonging to the Physics and Chemistry Research Institute of the Agency of Science and Technology as well as to Keio University Medical Department, was about 7%. In order to catch up and to reduce the gap with the USA, the Japanese government has invested important funds in the Millenium Project, launched in April 2000. The project includes three areas: rice genome, human genome and regenerative medicine. The 2000 budget included 347 billion yens devoted to life sciences. Genomics budget was twice that of neurosciences and amounted to 64 billion yens. Within the framework of the Millenium Project, the Ministry of Health intended to promote the study of genes related to such diseases as cancer, dementia, diabetes and hypertension; results concerning each of these diseases were expected by 2004 (Pons, 2000).
The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) set up a Centre for Analysis of Information Relating to Biological Resources which had a very strong DNA- equencing capacity, e.g. equivalent to that of Washington University in the USA (sequencing of
over 30 million nucleotide pairs per annum), and which will analyze the genome of micro-organisms used in fermentations and provide the information to the industrial sector. In addition, following the project launched in 1999 by Hitachi Ltd, Takeda Chemical Industries and Jutendo Medical Faculty, and aimed at identifying the genetic polymorphisms associated with allergic diseases, a similar project devoted to singlenucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) had been initiated in April 2000 under the aegis of Tokyo University and the Japanese Foundation for Science. The research work is being carried out in a DNA-sequencing centre where 16 private companies send researchers, with a view to contributing to the development of medicines tailored for an individual genetic make-up. This wok is similar to that undertaken by a US-European consortium (Pons, 2000).
On 30 October 2000, the pharmaceutical group Daiichi Pharmaceutical and the giant electronic company Fujitsu announced an alliance in genomics. Daiichi and Celestar Lexico Science – the biotechnology division of Fujitsu – were pooling their research efforts over the five-year period 2000-2005 to study the genes involved in cancer, ageing, infectious diseases and hypertension. Daiichi devoted about $100 million to this kind of research in 2001-2002, and about 60 scientists were involved in this work of functional genomics (Pons, 2000).
