Director
Director
Director, Prof. Yasumichi Arai, MD, PhD
Benefiting from socioeconomic development and advances in medical technology, humanity has achieved unprecedented longevity over the past 100 years. At the same time, however, an increasing number of elderly people are requiring long-term care due to dementia, frailty, bone and joint diseases, and there are concerns about the future increase in the medical and nursing care burden. Extending healthy life expectancy is a key to both ensuring the quality of life of the elderly and the sustainability of the social security system.
The Keio University School of Medicine has been conducting research on centenarians and the very elderly (85 years and older) for more than 30 years since former Distinguished Professor Nobuyoshi Hirose started his research on centenarians in 1992. In 2014, the Center for Supercentenarian Medical Research (CSMR) was established in order to promote world-class interdisciplinary research on centenarians with a range of domestic and international collaborators at Keio University. We are promoting translational longevity research to develop new treatment and intervention strategies for aging-related diseases such as dementia and frailty by making full use of the bioresources of hundreds of centenarians and cutting-edge research methods such as multi-omics analysis and single cell analysis.
In order to tackle the challenges of global aging, collaboration across national and regional boundaries, academia and business is indeed required. The CSMR will actively conduct joint research with domestic and international research institutions, local governments, and businesses to contribute to the establishment of a scientific knowledge base that will support “a society in which everyone can enjoy a long and healthy life”.
