Why I Became a Researcher

Not long after entering graduate school, a professor in the laboratory I was affiliated with at the time said, "I will give all 100 rats that we received today to you, Ms. Amagase, so please establish an animal model for intractable gastric ulcers. Since there are ulcers that do not heal with the clinical use of gastric secretion inhibitors, I would like to present a model of this at an academic conference symposium in the fall…" And with that, my professional research life began. Since the experimental system that was decided in consultation with the professor would be as long as 8 to 12 weeks, several groups were prepared at the same time for the experiment. I was still unfamiliar with how to handle animals, so I would go to the laboratory earlier than anyone else to prepare drugs and then head to where the animals were being housed. Once all the animals were given their drugs and returned, it would already be time for lunch. As soon as lunch was over, I would go out to administer their second dose, and then I would administer their third dose in the evening…and repeat that process from there. I somehow got the data together and headed to Tokyo with the professor by bullet train. The first conference I attended was a historic and influential one, and it was only after I entered the conference hall that I realized that I actually administered drugs to animals and that the results we obtained would be presented. I was happy when the graphs and images of stomach ulcers from the results of my experiments were shown on the screen, and it made me think, “I'll do my best next year to conduct more experiments and present them myself!” After that, I returned to Kyoto on the Shinkansen and have continued like this in earnest to this very day.