Greetings from the Laboratory Director

We have established a laboratory to conduct research and development of a super-soft, finely-detailed heart replicas and ped UT-Heart in the Open Innovation Laboratory (OIL) of the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, aiming at supporting diagnosis and treatment of congenital heart disease, a heart condition that affects children. Thank you for taking the time to learn more about our work.

I have been engaged in clinical practice and research in pediatric cardiology for about 40 years. I am happy that I could save the lives of many children with heart disease through multi-disciplinary team medicine. However, I have often faced challenging situations where the conditions of my patients were extremely difficult to cure through surgery, and they had to repeatedly receive catheterization or further surgeries to treat remaining lesions. I have been passionate about conducting research and development of new medical devices based on new ideas and delivering them for children with heart disease. I was engaged in basic research in pathology during the three years of my graduate studies and also engaged in translational research, which seeks to apply basic research to clinical practice, during my studies in the United States. Based in this laboratory, we conduct research and development that involves many doctors, researchers, and companies who are all working together to help patients with congenital heart disease achieve the best possible quality of life so that they can grow up healthy and live happy lives. Thank you for your support.

Many people supported us in establishing this laboratory. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the following partners: National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center (Department of Pediatric Cardiology, Department of Pediatric Cardiovascular Surgery, Open Innovation Center, Department of Industrial-Academic Collaboration, Department of Medical Informatics, Department of Data Science), The University of Tokyo Future Center Initiative, UT-Heart Inc., Japan Medical Device Corporation, PIA Corporation Inc., CrossMedical, Inc., SCREEN Holdings Co., Ltd., and Kyoeisha Chemical Co., Ltd.