As President, it is a great honor for me to organize the 47th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology (JSOT). This year's annual meeting was initially planned to be held at Sendai International Center just before the 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic games. But, after careful consideration of the Covid-19 epidemic spread, the organizing team of 47th JSOT (JSOT2020) has decided to host the annual meeting in this year online only. The virtual meeting will be held as web-based meeting on the initially planned dates from 29th June – 1st July 2020. It will be a great opportunity to further advance internationalization, which is coincidentally promoted by holding a virtually borderless meeting. I am keenly aware that holding this year’s annual meeting as a first virtual meeting is a very important endeavor for our JSOT.

The current situation of toxicology is that newly developed technologies, such as genome editing, have been incorporated into toxicology research immediately after they were established. Additionally, with the development of other technologies such as nanotechnology, the number of substances subjected to toxicology research has increased. Thus, the fields involved in toxicology research have diversified, and the methods of research have become more complex. This indicates that risk assessment and risk management issues requiring future toxicological approaches cannot be solved using a single technique, even if modern toxicological approaches are used. The concept of “one toxicology” was proposed by Dr. Val Beasley in 2009, and it involves integrating medicine, veterinary medicine, and environmental toxicology in order to achieve “one health.” I think this concept is necessary to protect health of the entire “living” environment, including humans and animals, while decreasing the risks from developing new technologies. That is, all toxicological knowledge must be merged at every level, from the individual to the cellular and molecular levels, from in vivo to in vitro and in silico toxicology, and from epidemiological and clinical studies to nonclinical studies. The concept, which was proposed 10 years ago, is now being recognized as a concept in which various research fields converge because of the development of new technologies that cross academic and technological fields. At the same time, it considers the meaning of internationalization promoted by the web-based meeting, which is a suitable theme for the 2020 Annual Meeting.

I hope you will be able to feel the world of “one toxicology” with the progress of the JSOT towards internationalization in the first web meeting, and I look forward to your participation.

Sincerely,