AMED (Japan Agency for Medical R&D)

Funds medical research in Japan across drug discovery, devices, regenerative therapies, and healthcare innovation from early studies to development.

Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) is Japan's national medical R&D agency, established on April 1, 2015 and based in Tokyo. The agency sits under the national government and is overseen by the Prime Minister together with MEXT, MHLW, and METI. Its FY 2026 budget is JPY 116.9 billion, and it employed 791 full-time staff as of April 1, 2026.

AMED's remit spans nine major research initiatives, including innovative drug discovery and development, medical devices and healthcare, regenerative medicine and cell and gene therapies, infectious disease research, basic research for medical innovation, translational and clinical research acceleration, the medical innovation ecosystem, and SCARDA for biomedical advanced vaccine R&D. The record also shows grant programs such as the TR program, CiCLE, AMED-CREST/PRIME/LEAP, the Pharmaceutical Startup Ecosystem program, and infrastructure programs for drug discovery seeds, the iD3 archive, and the Drug Discovery Support Network.

AMED is the right fit for research teams that need competitive public support from basic science through clinical development. Its English portal lays out the program families clearly, but application activity runs in Japanese, and the startup ecosystem route requires co-investment from a registered venture capital partner. That combination makes AMED Japan's central medical research funder, with enough breadth to support universities, hospitals, startups, and industry partners at different stages.