L-R: Prof. Rejko Krüger, FNR PEARL Chair at uni.lu; Lydia Mutsch, Minister of Health; Prof. Hajime Arai, President of Juntendo University; Prof. Nobutaka Hattori, Juntendo University; Credit: MSAN

Luxembourg and Japan have agreed to the strengthening of cooperation in the fields of health and biomedical research.

Earlier this month, a delegation from Luxembourg accompanied Minister of Health Lydia Mutsch on an official three-day trip to Japan with the aim of strengthening and promoting scientific cooperation between the two countries and reinforcing links and exchanges in the health policy domain.

On the occasion of this trip to Japan, the Luxembourg Minister met with the Japanese Deputy Minister of Health, Mizuho Onuma, to discuss different topics common to both countries such as chronic diseases, the care of those suffering from said diseases and actions concerning the aging of population and dementia/Alzheimer's.

Minister Mutsch was also able to witness the signing of a collaboration agreement between Juntendo University and Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg in the field of Parkinson's disease. This collaboration will have a direct medium-term impact on Luxembourg patients with a strong link with the NCER-PD project, the cohort of patients with Parkinson's disease. This collaboration will also create synergies with the secondary prevention of certain dementia diseases as initiated by the PDP programme (dementia prevention programme) of the Ministry of Health.

This collaborative project between RIKEN (Japan) and the two Luxembourg institutions, Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) and LCSB, has been based on an agreement signed in 2015 between the National Research Fund (FNR) and RIKEN.

Throughout the visit, Luxembourg reaffirmed its interest in sustained cooperation not only at the political level, but also at the scientific level and in the field of health. Indeed, during many meetings and discussions, the members of the Luxembourg delegation, composed of representatives of the LCSB, the LIH and the FNR, had long discussions with their Japanese colleagues. The emerging links between Luxembourg's public research institutions and Japanese institutions have more specifically been strengthened in the biomedical field, in which Luxembourg has two centres with LCSB and LIH with recognised expertise in the field of neurodegenerative diseases.