Welcome Address

The 96th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Parasitology will be held on March 18–19, 2027, at Juroku Plaza in Gifu City. This will be the first time that the Annual Meeting of the Society has been held in Gifu.

The theme of this meeting is “The Present and Future of Parasitology.”

This may sound like an ambitious theme, but our intention is not to predict the future. Rather, we would like to consider what lies ahead by looking at where parasitology stands today from several perspectives: what we have learned so far, what has now become possible, and who is carrying this research forward.

One of these perspectives is people. The Japanese Society of Parasitology has presented the Best Presentation Award (BPA) each year to outstanding early-career researchers. At this meeting, we are planning a session featuring previous BPA recipients, who will share the paths they have taken since receiving the award, their current positions, and the research they are pursuing today. The future of research is shaped not only by new technologies and new scientific questions, but also by the people who carry the field forward. Looking at where those who once presented at our meetings as young researchers are today may therefore offer another way of thinking about the future of parasitology.

Major changes are also taking place in the methods available for parasitological research. Molecular biological approaches were adopted relatively early in protozoan research, leading to major advances in our understanding of parasites through studies based on genes and genomes. Helminth research, in contrast, has faced considerable technical challenges because of the multicellular nature and complex life cycles of these organisms. In recent years, however, rapid advances in genome analysis, functional studies, and genetic manipulation have begun to move helminth research into a new phase. Through these ongoing developments, we hope to consider where helminth research may go from here.

There is also another kind of future to consider: not the future of parasitology, but the future of parasites themselves.

Parasites and their hosts have changed over evolutionary time, continuously influencing one another. Changes in hosts create new selective pressures on parasites, while the presence of parasites in turn affects host traits. At this meeting, we will examine phenomena that have emerged from host–parasite interactions from the perspective of coevolutionary phenotypes. Understanding their past coevolution may provide clues to how parasites will continue to change, how they may coexist with their hosts, and what new relationships may emerge between them. By viewing these questions along an evolutionary timescale, we would also like to consider the future of parasites themselves.

When we speak of “the present and future,” we do not mean that the future is waiting for us in some predetermined form. The people who conduct the research, new approaches and technologies, the relationships between hosts and parasites, and parasites themselves as continually evolving organisms—all of these represent different aspects of the present. By bringing them together, we hope this meeting will provide an opportunity to think about both the future of parasitology and the future of parasites.

Together with the general presentations, we hope that this meeting will provide a forum for discussion across generations, research subjects, and methodological approaches. We look forward to two days in which each participant brings their own perspective on the present of parasitology and joins us in considering what may lie beyond it.

We sincerely look forward to welcoming many of you to Gifu and to your active participation and presentations.

 

MAEKAWA Yoichi
President, The 96th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Parasitology
Department of Parasitology and Infectious Diseases,
Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine