• Genome-wide association meta-analysis identifies risk variants for pancreatic cancer (Nature Communications, 2020, in press)
    In inter-institutional collaboration with the Aichi Cancer Center (Professor Keitaro Matsuo), the genome characteristics in pancreatic cancer were studied and elucidated for further improvement of precision medicine in Japan.

  • Convolutional neural network can recognize drug resistance of single cancer cells (Int. J. Mol. Sci., 2020, in press).   

    In the international collaboration with University of Rome, as well as department of gastroenterology (Profs Yuichiro Doki and Hidetoshi Eguchi), Yanagisawa et al. performed the analysis of drug resistance of single cancer cells by the convolutional neural network (CNN) model, which demonstrated that a CNN based on the VGG16 model could predict the efficiency of anti-tumor drugs at single-cell level, suggesting that precision medicine for individual patients may be possible by extracting circulating tumor cells from blood by using an AI system.

  • COVID-19 drug discovery using intensive approaches (Int. J. Mol. Sci., 2020, in press).   

    In the international collaboration with Hirotsu Bio Science Inc., Kinshu-kai Medical Corporation, IDEA Consultants Inc., Kyowa-kai Medical Corporation, Unitech Co. Ltd., as well as department of gastroenterology (Profs Yuichiro Doki and Hidetoshi Eguchi), Asai et al. reviewerd the state-of-art technology for the drug repositioning discovery against COVID-19. 
  • Hereditary pancreatitis model by blastocyst complementation in mouse (Oncotarget, 2020, in press).
    In the international collaboration with Unitech Co., Ltd., Asai et al. established the mouse model by the blastocyst complementation (BC) method, which mimics to human hereditary pancreatitis, and showed that the BC method was useful for the reproduction and study of pancreatic disorders. The present study opens the possibility of investigating uncharacterized human diseases by utilizing the BC method.

  • Theoretical analyses and experimental validation of effects caused by fluorinated substituent modification of DNA (Scientific Reports, 2020, in press)

    In collaboration with Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Department of Gastroenterology (Profs Yuichiro Doki and Masaki Mori) and Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences (Prof Obika), as well as Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, Koseki et al. performed the structural based studies of nucleotide medicine. Given that halogen-modified nucleic acid molecules, such as trifluorothymidine (FTD) and 5-fluorouracil, are widely used in medical science and clinical site, our study focused on the reason why a large differences between FTD and 5-fluorouracil occurs. The results showed the important structural changes caused by trifluoromethyl group, for the anti-tumor effect of FTD.

  • One-carbon metabolism for cancer diagnostic and therapeutic approaches (Cancer Letters, 2019)

    In the international collaboration with Japan (Professor Taniguchi) and Italy (Professor Vecchione), Dr. Asai demonstrated the significance of one-carbon metabolism in cancer and discussed the perspectives in precision medicine. Understanding 1C metabolism aids the development of novel cancer diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

  • CD44/CD133-positive colorectal cancer stem cells are sensitive to trifluridine (FTD) exposure (Scientific Reports, 2019, in press).
    In collaboration with Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, as well as Osaka University (Profs Yuichiro Doki and Masaki Mori), Tsunekuni et al. studied the effects of FTD exposure to CD44/CD133-positive cancer stem cells (CSCs) and elucidated firstly the mechanism on CSC-targeting FTD-containing chemotherapy for colorectal cancer.
  • Distinct methylation levels of mature microRNAs in gastrointestinal cancers (Nature Communications, 2019, in press).
    In collaboration with Osaka University (Profs Yuichiro Doki and Masaki Mori, and Associate Prof Hidetoshi Eguchi), Konno et al. have studied the methylation events in miRNA by utilizing the MS-based new technology and have found that the epitranscriptome information is critical for the accurate diagnosis of gastrointestinal cancers, suggesting that the findings provide a basis for new diagnostic strategies for early stage cancer and add a new dimension to our understanding of miRNA biology.

  • Reproducibility of CRISPR-Cas9 Methods for generation of conditional mouse alleles: a multi-center evaluation (Genome Biology, 2019, in press)

    In collaboration with the international consortium, the efficiency and conditions were studied and elucidated for further improvement of genetic engineering technology in animal model.

  • Computational analyses for cancer biology based on exhaustive experimental backgrounds (Cancer Drug Resistance, BOOK section, 2019)

    In the view of recent advance of the field of cancer science, Koseki et al. updated the interdisciplinary knowledge and information regarding the cancer metabolism, which may be involved in causing resistance to chemotherapy for further development of precision medicine.