Nara Medical University

Overview

Nara Medical University

Nara Medical University (Nara Kenritsu Ika Daigaku) is a public university located in Nara, Japan. Its predecessor, the Nara Prefectural Medical College, was established in 1945 while the current university was founded in 1952. Its graduate school was formed in 1960 before the institution was organized into a public university corporation in 2007. Nara Medical University belongs to the top-ranked educational medical schools in the country with contributions to the fields of internal medicine, biology, and surgery.

Nara Medical University Key Statistics

The university is composed of three faculties and one graduate school namely the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Nursing, and the Graduate School of Medicine. There are undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs on offer.

Nara Medical University’s campus in the city of Kashihara offers facilities including an auditorium, the university hospital, tennis court, gymnasium, and swimming pool. The university also has the Physician Assignment Center for organizing the demand and supply of doctors, the Center for Health Control conducting health examinations and antibody tests of staff members and students, and the Nursing Career Support Center for training nursing professionals.

Other Nara Medical University key statistics include its library that holds 150,000 books, 6,000 journal titles, and electronic resources.

Nara Medical University Research

The university conducts research on areas including dentistry, pharmacy, anatomy, physics, and psychiatry with research support coming from donations of private companies, corporations, and from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. For 2020-2021 Nara Medical University reported research expenses amounting to JPY 909 million.

Internal medicine, biology, and surgery are the top fields of Nara Medical University research publication. Its research outputs have been presented at conferences such as the International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society in 2020, the American Thoracic Society International Conference in 2011, and the Medical Informatics Europe conference also in 2020.

The most cited article from the university is Nakatomi et al.’s (2002) “Regeneration of hippocampal pyramidal neurons after ischemic brain injury by recruitment of endogenous neural progenitors” which appeared in Cell and has more than 1,800 citations to date. The second most cited publication is Nomi et al.’s (2007) “Clinical significance and therapeutic potential of the programmed death-1 ligand/programmed death-1 pathway in human pancreatic cancer” featured in Clinical Cancer Research and has over 1,210 citations. In addition, the third most cited work is Trouillas et al.’s (1997) “International cooperative ataxia rating scale for pharmacological assessment of the cerebellar syndrome” published in the Journal of the Neurological Sciences and has above 1,200 citations so far.

Nara Medical University has the Advanced Medical Research Center composed of four laboratories namely the Radioisotope Laboratory, Medical Genetics laboratory, Laboratory Animal facility, and the Research Core Facilities. The center also has three research units which are the Neural System Research, Cardiovascular System Research, and Medical Informatics. The university also has the Laboratory of Bio-Molecular Dynamics with a focus on the study of membrane proteins as well as the physiological roles and transport mechanisms of transporters.