New Editorial Board Member of the Newsletter Wishes for Further Development of the Japanese Society of Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics
Hiroshi Yamazaki (Showa Pharmaceutical Univ.)
Front row, from right, Ozawa, Kato; back row, from right, Miura, Yamazaki
DMPK Newsletter Editorial Board Members
- Shogo OZAWA (National Institute of Health Sciences)
- Motohiro KATO (Chugai Pharmaceutical)
- Shinichi Miura (Sankyo)
- Hiroshi Yamazaki (Showa Pharmaceutical Univ., Chair)
I am pleased to announce that I have taken over the Newsletter Editorial Committee of DMPK, the Journal of the Japanese Society for Pharmacokinetics, from the first chairperson, Dr. Tamai. The four members of the first committee have been involved in editing articles in Japanese for the past three and a half years since 2002, when the journal was first published in English. Shogo Ozawa (National Institute of Health Sciences), Motohiro Kato (Chugai Pharmaceutical), Shinichi Miura (Sankyo), and Hiroshi Yamazaki (Showa Pharmaceutical University, Chairman) will serve as the second editorial board members. I am sure there are many things I have not done well, but I would like to express my gratitude to all the members of the society for their cooperation.
The chairperson of the new committee will give a brief history of the inauguration of the new committee. Dr. Hiroshi Chiba of Chiba University, who was appointed as the next DMPK Editor-in-Chief, asked Dr. Yamazaki if he would be interested in serving as the Newsletter Committee Chair. Dr. Yamazaki had been a member of former DMPK President Kamataki’s laboratory and had been involved in two DMPK “special subcommittee” activities: PubMed inclusion and electronic submission. Since this was an unexpected appointment, I first consulted with Dr. Ozawa, a fellow member of both subcommittees, and we both agreed to accept it. Then, I discussed the composition of the next committee with Committee Member Ozawa. About two-thirds of the members of the Japanese Pharmacokinetics Society belong to companies. In order to adapt the content of the newsletter to the needs of our members, Ozawa and Yamazaki decided to recruit two more researchers from companies, one each from Ozawa and Yamazaki, and this resulted in the composition of this four-member committee.
An editorial committee meeting was immediately held to discuss editorial policy, with Minezo Otsuka, Secretary General of the Society, and Nobumi Nishizawa and Yukiko Kishibe of the Society’s secretariat in attendance. It was confirmed that the committee will promote projects that meet the needs of readers in detail while continuing the policy of the first committee. The committee began to consider the possibility of writing a series of articles related to toxicogenomics in the Lecture Note series, which has continuity. As a new project, we have decided to publish a series of articles titled “Pharmacokinetic Researchers in Japan (tentative title),” in which we will ask pharmacokinetic researchers to freely express their personal opinions and introduce the next author in turn, thereby expanding the “circle” of pharmacokinetic researchers. In addition, a “Experimental Methods Series” (tentative title), which will be useful in daily research, is being planned mainly by committee members Kato and Miura. We are sure that readers will receive requests from various quarters, not only from the editorial board members, for projects and writing assignments. We are very much looking forward to your cooperation for the further development of the Japanese Pharmacokinetics Society.
One of the big news this year is the start of the electronic submission system for manuscripts for the DMPK main journal, which will change the DMPK submission rules and methods. We are also planning to publish a Japanese-language commentary on these changes in our newsletter. It was also confirmed as an editorial policy that responses from readers to articles to be published in the future will be actively published as articles. While we were preparing this greeting letter, we also received news from the board of directors that they are going to publish a report on the vigorous activities of the Pharmacokinetic Study Promotion Committee in three parts at the same time. They are the background of the establishment of the “Organization for Supporting Drug Development” as a limited liability intermediate corporation, the purpose of the corporation, the “Opinion on the Promotion of Drug Development through Early Clinical Trials,” and a major work on “The Necessity of Promoting PK/PD Studies in Drug Development.
We, the new editorial board members of the newsletter, would like to provide you with live information from our daily life involved in pharmacokinetic research. We appreciate your comments, requests, criticisms, and cooperation.