C-5-09

The CADU Alliance N3 Project1

2Tsuguchika Kaminuma 1

Masaki Morioka 2kaminuma@join-ica.org

msmorioka-tky@umin.ac.jp

Kaoru Mogushi 2
mogushi@bioinfo.tmd.ac.jp

Masumi Yukawa 1

Naomi Komiyama 1

Hiroshi Tanaka 2yukawa@join-ica.org

komiyama@join-ica.org

tanaka@bioinfo.tmd.ac.jp

Institute for Cyber Associates, 1-11-29 Kugenuma-Fujigaya, Fujisawa-city, Kanagawa
251-0031, Japan
Department of Bioinformatics, Division of Medical Genomics, Medical Research Institute,Tokyo Medical and Dental University, 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8510, Japan

Keywords: CBI, Quantum Computing, Open Courseware, Education of Genomics
The history of the Chem-Bio Informatics Society goes back to 1981. The term Chem-BioInformatics (CBI) had been coined to cover various interdisciplinary areas for studying the effectsof chemicals on biosystems at the molecular level. Since then, drug discovery has been the most
attractive research area of the CBI, and over the years, it has been a force for the advancement andsophistication of computational methods, programming systems, databases, knowledge-bases, andarts of applying these methodologies and computational resources. Yet now it seems that thisdiscipline has lost its vital energy to offer good new jobs, to attract investors, and to draw theattention of the general public.
We propose new frontiers, which should need new professionals as a workforce, and new
partnerships for cultivating these frontiers in order to revitalize this discipline. First, we proposethat since CBI consists of such interdisciplinary areas as natural sciences, informatics, andcomputing, it is natural to include physics here. Although information and computing had not been
subjects of physics for a long time, the emerging new fields of quantum information and quantum
computing have drastically changed this situation. It is time to consider, for example,
computational chemistry simulation by quantum computers. Second, we propose to include
applications of smart phones or tablets, and cloud services to CBI. Some examples were welldiscussed in several papers. Third, we propose to pay special attention to educating many
professionals working in health and medical fields.
The last proposal must be considered most seriously, since such educational needs are urgent andtremendously important. It is urgent because very rapid advances of sequencing technology are
drastically reducing the costs and time required for genetic and genomic testing so that such tests,
which require some genomic competency, may be accepted in any service sectors in health andmedical cares. This means that, not only basic researchers in clinical medicine, especially those
who are dealing with cancer, but also many clinical professionals such as primary care physicians,nurses, pharmacists, nutritionists, and others must improve their competencies and literacy ofgenomics. There will be a need to recruit many bioinformaticians to take part in this task.
Moreover such a career extension might open new chances for them. Open courseware based on
the Internet would be a very strong tool for this purpose.
Right now we are proposing to implement some of these proposals in the context of activities of
the CADU Alliance. We hope such efforts might contribute to revitalize this discipline.