NEWS

Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, starts a new drug developement in an All-Japan System

The Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University (Masaru Tomita, Director General), has announced the start of a new drug development program in collaboration with eight national research institutes based on the "Fundamental Research Promotion Program in the Healthcare and Medical Field" of the National Institute of Biomedical Innovation (Koichi Yamanishi, Director General).

(Reference: FY2010 Projects by National Institute of Biomedical Innovation(Japanese) )

Dr.Osamu Shimomura visited IAB for the first time

Dr.Osamu Shimomura, visited IAB for the first time and he gave the talk to 130 audience including local junior high, high school students and Keio students.

Spring Science Camp 2010

A science training program for high-school students from all over Japan was held on Mar 25-27, 2010 at the Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University in Tsuruoka. The event, Spring Science Camp 2010, was sponsored by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) , and also supported by the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies.

Science Camp website of JST (Japanese)>>

Program (Japanese) >>

Dr.Nakada wins the Young Scientist Award at Japan Society for Plant Systematics

Dr.Takashi Nakada(research associate) received Young Scientist Award at the 9th Annual Meeting of Japan Society for Plant Systematics(Mar 25-27, 2010).

Doctoral student wins Presentation Award at JBS Annual Meeting

IAB graduate student Mr. Kenjiro Kami (Graduate School of Media and Governance, doctoral program) received Presentation Award at The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Japanese Biochemical Society (Oct.21-24, 2009), organized by The Japanese Biochemical Society . The title of his presentation is "Metabolome analysis of cancer cells under nutrient-deprived condition by capillary electrophoresis mass spectrometry"

Discovery of a new therapeutic method to prevent the progress of a chronic kidney disease

Prof. Takaaki Abe, Division of Medical Science, Tohoku University Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering working in collaboration with a group of researchers including Prof. T. Soga of the Institute for Advanced Biosciences, Keio University, has discovered a new therapeutic target of chronic kidney disease "OATP-R" in a kidney. The OATP-R possesses the ability to reduce the accumulation of uremic toxins, however, its effect diminishes under the condition of renal failure. This research group has discovered that various statins, used as hypolipidemics, upregulate the expression of OATP-R, thus, intake of those statins leads to accrual of OATP-R to discharge uremic toxins out of a body and improve organ dysfunction. This research has developed a new therapeutic method to prevent the progress of renal failure including introduction of dialysis.

The article of this discovery was published in the electronic version of Journal of American Society of Nephrology on October 29. http://jasn.asnjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/ASN.2009070696