I am Tohko Arai of Shionogi & Co., Ltd., and I have been appointed the 5th President of JSPS in accordance with Article 11, Paragraph 2 of the JSPS bylaws. I would like to say a few words on this occasion. Since its establishment in December 2009, JSPS has continuously worked towards the goal of advancing the knowledge and technology of safety pharmacology, which is necessary to bring better medicines to the world, under the unwavering mission of "contributing to the development of excellent pharmaceuticals through the inheritance and innovation of safety pharmacology". At the time of our establishment, we promised to host an annual scientific meeting for researchers involved in safety pharmacology studies, and we recently successfully concluded the 16th annual meeting in February 2025. This annual meeting has grown to be recognized by many people, and I believe that it has been able to play a role in supporting safety pharmacology research from both scientific and regulatory science perspectives, albeit in a small way. In addition, our research group has regularly hosted various information and technology exchange meetings (iSmart^*1, CiPA^*2, JiCSA^*3, J-ICET ^*4, JESICE^*5) to provide our members with valuable opportunities for information, technology, and human resource exchange. While safety pharmacology itself is considered an area that will not disappear in the near future, its field is shrinking year by year, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for a single company or facility to inherit and innovate safety pharmacology knowledge and technology. Given this background, we also consider it one of our responsibilities to support the development of next-generation researchers who will lead safety pharmacology research through activities such as these exchange meetings.On the other hand, as a hub organization for the development of safety pharmacology in Japan, our research group believes that it is necessary to newly devise a mechanism to strengthen the connections among our members, rather than just unilaterally disseminating information to them. We have previously implemented measures to encourage information sharing and discussion among our members by establishing a "Forum" and a "JSPS Community" on the JSPS website, but unfortunately, these have not been actively used, and we are currently discussing new measures. As pharmaceutical modalities diversify and the difficulty of new drug discovery increases, increasingly diverse approaches are required for "safety pharmacology studies". To accomplish these, it is essential to maintain cooperation among industry, government, and academia, as well as international collaboration at the academic level. Based on these considerations, we would like to propose concrete plans in the future, and we ask for the active participation and cooperation of our members.

*1: Investigation of in silico/in vitro model for arrhythmogenic risk prediction
*2: Comprehensive in vitro proarrhythmia assay
*3: Japan iPS cardiac safety assessment
*4: Japan activity for improvement of cardiovascular evaluation by telemetry system
*5: Japan activity for encouragement, succession and improvement of CNS evaluation

April 2025

Tohko Arai
President, Japanese Safety Pharmacology Society
Shionogi & Co., Ltd.
Laboratory for Drug Discovery and Development