Background / Vision

Japan is an advanced country with a declining population, low birthrate, aging society, and social issues such as increasing lifestyle-related diseases and increasing demand for medicines. Under these circumstances, creating a society where people can spend 100 years of their lives happy and in good health is an extremely important initiative that will determine the future of Japan and the world.

This center emphasizes the importance of well-being (physical, mental, and social) for all generations of citizens, and aims to create the science, technology, and industrial forms necessary to achieve this goal by mobilizing the collective wisdom accumulated in Tsukuba. In particular, by creating basic technologies that support the well-being of the people in the areas of medicine, food, and the environment (as well as affiliated industries) we hope to eliminate issues that could significantly weaken our social structure, such as a declining birthrate, aging population, and anxiety about emerging infectious diseases or natural disasters. This will allow us to create a society in which all generations of people exist in a state of comprehensive well-being.

The vision of the future society envisioned by this center is “a digital bioeconomy” society that supports the well-being of its citizens based on a quantitative understanding of multimodal information that affects people’s health, such as genome, diet, and social environment, through the application of digital biotechnology. Based on an innovative industry-academia-government co-creation system and digital bio-first human resources created in the process of realizing this future society, we aim to make Tsukuba Science City an international bio-community hub.

The Tsukuba area, as part of the Tsukuba International Strategic Special Zone, aims to become Tsukuba Science City and the University of Tsukuba has taken the lead in establishing the Tsukuba Life Science Promotion Council (TLSK), a biotechnology consortium that includes universities, local governments, research institutions, and more than 60 companies. In the field of digital science, we have also established the Tsukuba Smart City Council, which aims to become a demonstration base for Society 5.0. In formulating the vision for this center, we solicited opinions from companies and institutions in a wide range of fields. For example, a local government commented that “to promote the development of pharmaceuticals and other products, it is important to have a system that promotes the more effective use of human biological samples” and “to develop technologies that make full use of digital biodata through the fusion of digital and biological technologies.” We also received diverse opinions from citizens, such as “I want to know how we can prevent ourselves from getting sick and how we can take action with evidence on a daily basis” and “I want a society where children can live in good health.” We have assembled the wishes, hopes, and dreams of our citizens and institutions into the expression “Well-being for all generations of citizens,” which accurately describes our vision for the center.