Vol.3 No.4 2011

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Talk−299−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.3 No.4 (2011) Basic medicine existed throughout the ages. Physiology developed in the ancient times not because people wanted to know the cause of diseases, but because people were naturally curious about “how the human body is composed” or “why does the heart beat on its own”.On the other hand, clinical medicine is an application of the understanding of how the physiological functions change into a pathological state, using the knowledge and information obtained in basic medicine. There are studies in which humans and diseases are used as direct subjects, to reveal the differences between a normal individual and a diseased individual. In some cases, large-scale clinical researches are conducted using several hundreds or thousands of human subjects to see whether a drug really works or whether it is a placebo effect (where the natural healing effect is observed due to the psychological effect of taking the drug, even though there is no actual pharmaceutical effect).(Moderator)There are clinical researches using disease-model animals, but there are also different kinds of clinical research where a large-scale research is done to determine whether it is applicable for human treatment.(Moderator)To utilize the results of scientific research in society, we believe the research that pursues a methodology for synthesizing and integrating the elemental technologies is important as well as the conventional analytical and pure basic researches. In the field of medicine, there are basic and clinical researches. Can you explain whether these two are essentially different disciplines, and what exactly is clinical research?Type 2 Basic Research and clinical medicine (Higuchi)The essence of medical research is to develop a new therapy to treat the patient, and to seek new therapy by studying the cause of a disease. In medical research, there is the approach where one becomes directly involved in the disease to understand it, and also the approach where the elements and foundations that comprise the human body and the diseases are investigated thoroughly, and then the actual disease in humans is confronted with such knowledge and technology. Basic medicine studies the functions of normal cells and the workings of normal neurons, while clinical research looks at the pathological conditions and the diseased tissues.Synthesiology Editorial BoardParticipants: Dr. Teruhiko Higuchi, President, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry Dr. Akira Ono, Editor in Chief, SynthesiologyModerator: Dr. Motoyuki Akamatsu, Executive Editor, SynthesiologyAmong medical researches, the clinical research utilizes results of the basic research for society in the form of therapy. President Higuchi of the National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry (NCNP) and Ono, Editor in Chief of Synthesiology discussed the situation of clinical research in Japan. They shared common goals between the clinical research in the medical field and synthesiology.Clinical research and synthesiology[Translation from Synthesiology, Vol.3, No.4, p.309-314 (2010)]Dr. Ono (left), Dr. Akamatsu (center) and Dr. Higuchi (right)

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