Studying drug actions often takes you to new, completely unexpected, research avenues. This is joy of pharmacology. I first became aware of pharmacology as such science when I worked as a postdoctoral fellow in John Vane's laboratory at Wellcome Research Laboratories in England, where people used bioassay, blocked the actions of known substances with respective antagonists and searched for new bioactive substances. I also experienced drug development process there, because Wellcome Research Laboratories were the research institute of the Burroughs-Wellcome Company. I realized that the whole process of drug development from basic research to clinical trial is an enormously big scale of experiment. My research thereafter on the prostanoid receptors and Rho GTPases both originated from the analysis of drugs (compounds and toxin, respectively), and took me to enjoy exploration of almost all body functions and in the world of cell biology. Quite recently, I have been associated with research collaboration with Astellas Pharma and have been using drug candidates and enjoying research avenues new to me and new to all. Joy of pharmacology never ceases.

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