After serving as a professor for 12 years and as the director for 10 years for Institute of Rheumatology, Tokyo Women's Medical University, Naoyuki Kamatani, MD, PhD surprised people by resigning from the position in July 2008, leaving 5 years of his term of office. He founded Institute for Data Analysis (IDA) in August, 2008 and became the chairperson. He had established fame in the wide-range fields of clinical medicine, rheumatology, metabolic diseases, human genetics, molecular biology, statistics and pharmacogenetics during a 35 year period, and published more than 400 papers.



He was born in 1948 in Fukuoka prefecture, Japan. In 1967, he graduated from Tagawa senior high-school in Fukuoka and entered Science Category III in University of Tokyo in the same year. In 1973, he graduated from Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo. After the graduation, he extended his career as a clinician as well as a medical instructor and a research biologist in University of Tokyo Hospital, Hitachi General Hospital in Hitachi and Institute of Rheumatology, Tokyo Women's Medical University. He had been specialized as a clinician in collagen diseases, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, and genetic diseases. From April, 1979 to May, 1982, he was employed as a researcher by Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in California, USA and published papers that lead researchers to genetic variations in cancer cells. He also served as a visiting professor of medicine from April, 1989 to May, 1990 in University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He was awarded MD and PhD from University of Tokyo.

He is a co-founder with the current president Jun-ichi Kaku of StaGen Co. Ltd.

He played a central role in Tokyo Women's Medical University and Japanese Society for Human Genetics (JSHG) in the field of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics and has sufficient experience in the construction of guidelines for genetic researches, designing and filing of the genetic research plans, and consideration and solution of ethical problems. He has submitted more than 10 genetic research plans to Tokyo Women's Medical University. After such plans were approved, they were performed and produced many papers some of which lead to the submission or approval of patents.

In 2000, answering to the request by Pharma SNP Consortium composed of 43 different pharmaceutical companies from 83 companies in The Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (JPMA), he collected DNA samples from more than 1,000 Japanese volunteers after obtaining the approval from the ethics committees, and determined SNP genotypes at about 5,000 SNPs in about 200 drug-related genes. (collaboration with Pharma SNP Consortium, RIKEN and Prof. Yusuke Nakamura).

Current positions: Group Director, Center for Genomic Medicine (CGM) in RIKEN (non-permanent staff); Director, Gout Research Foundation; Board Member, Japanese Society of Gout and Nucleic Acid Metabolism (Vice Director); Board Member, Japanese Society for Human Genetics (JSHG); Chairperson, Committee for Pharmacogenetics and Genomics, JSHG