Research Introduction
Taking Advantage of the "Bidirectional Translational Research", we intend to clarify pathogenesis of intractable diseases including cancers and inflammatory/autoimmune disorders and develop new diagnostic and therapeutic agents to these intractable diseases.
Nowadays, based on the accumulated findings of the basic immunology, a number of biologic agents have been generated and have shown great efficacy on intractable immune disorders. This "from bench to clinic" approach is called translational research and is expected to achieve more success in the future. Recently, on the other hand, advances in the technology of omics analysis enabled us to identify disease-related molecules by the "from clinic to bench" approach, analyzing small amounts of clinical samples provided from patients with intractable/rare diseases. In collaboration with a number of medical school departments and pharmaceutical companies, we not only perform translational research initiated from our basic studies but also take reverse-translational approaches initiated from the analyses of clinical samples to identify disease-related molecules. Following themes are currently underway to overcome current clinical problems.
- Theme 1: Development of a new gene therapy against intractable cancers by using SOCS, the suppressors of cytokine signaling.
- Theme 2: Clinical application of leucine-rich α2 glycoprotein (LRG) as a new inflammatory biomarker to evaluate disease activity of intractable immune disorders.
- Theme 3-1: Development of new anti-cancer antibodies by targeting novel cell-surface tumor antigens including GPC1
- Theme 3-2: Development of new anti-cancer antibodies by targeting novel cell-surface tumor antigens including LSR
- Theme 4: Consortium for exploratory research to obtain new therapeutic targets of intractable immune disease
