1. General Description of the Department

When Yamanashi Medical College was established on April 1st, 1980, Shigeru Kobayashi who was an Associate Professor at Niigata University, School of Medicine, took up the post as a professor to found this department. Since then, the department has been operated under the leadership of the late Professor Shigeru Kobayashi for about ten years.　For education of our medical students, the department has been in charge of education in Neuroanatomy and Histology. Our principle in the teaching was to educate students with fundamental anatomy so that "they can observe human bodies and specimens with their own five senses and describe them with their own expression." In May 1992, Associate Professor Ohno, at the Faculty of Medicine, Shinshu University took over the position as the second generation professor of the department and started creating a new environment about seventeen years ago.

2. General Description of Our Education Efforts

Our medical students start taking classes and laboratory training in microscopic anatomy (histology) from April of their second year. The purpose of this is to have them master the fundamental knowledge about cellular tissues of the human body, which they need in order to study clinical and fundamental medicine. We also provide classes and laboratory training in neuroanatomy as a part of macroscopic anatomy. At the point when students are assigned to each department in the later term of the third year, we start teaching them the advanced level of dynamic molecular morphofunctions as a cutting-edge medical research on top of the fundamental knowledge they have learned in histology classes. Through the course, we strive to educate and guide them with emphasis on medical scientific thinking rather than morphological knowledge in the medical field so that they can acquire accomplishments in order to respond to the demands of the society as a medical practitioner or a medical researcher.

3.Outline and Speciality of the Department's Research

The characteristic of the department is that we do molecular morphofunctional analyses using biological specimens handled (processed) with the quick-freezing method which produces minimum artificial byproducts during the preparation of the specimens. With specimens processed with conventional microscopic techniques, it is impossible to avoid morphological alteration due to fixation, dehydration, and embedding. We had already prepared replica membranes and freeze-substituted specimens of experimental animal and human tissues that were treaded with our quick-freezing method, and reported that they had different ultrastructure from conventional specimens. More recently, we have developed a new method capable of freezing cells and tissues in vivo (in vivo cryotechnique and cryobiopsy) without stopping the blood supply, and with that, we have been investigating new dynamic in vivo ultrastructure of animal cells and tissues. This newly developed in-vivo cryotechnical device is capable of quick-freezing tissues in vivo in a nonconventional way, and it enables us to observe morphological and immunohistochemical changes under various dynamics of blood circulation with an electron or light microscope. We are one of a few research departments in the world which has steadfastly maintained this research position of using cryotechniques.

4. Profile of the Faculty

The current faculty consists of me, Professor Ohno, and Associate Professor Terada (graduated from Shinshu University, Faculty of Medicine in 1990), Assistant Professor Nobuhiko Ohno, (graduated from Tokyo University, Faculty of Medicine in 2001), Research Associate Sei Saitoh (graduated from University of Yamanashi, Faculty of Medicine in 2000), Research Associate Yurika Saitoh (graduated from Showa Pharmaceutical University, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2003), three Chinese graduate students Bai, Chen and Wu, Engineering Official Kitahara, Engineering Official Futamata (in charge of body donation), two Chinese research fellows Shi and Huang, and Administrative Assistant Ogura.The fundamental policy of the department is "to provide education in anatomy and histology with passion and accomplish international level of research results while cultivating the individuality of the members". Therefore, every member of the department is required to set a goal both as a researcher and an educator, and to exert efforts to achieve the goals.

Our longstanding research project of "Fundamental and clinicopathological analyses of cells and tissues by various cryotechniques" has been carried out. Ohno has been trying to reveal the functional ultrastracture of cells and tissues using the quick-freezing and deep-etching method which he started at NIH in the United States in 1982. On the other hand, Associate Professor Terada, who came back from the Cleveland Clinic in the United States in 2002, conducts morphofunctional research on in vivo cells and tissues. Assistant Professor Ohno, who is now in Department of Neuroscience, Cleveland Clinic, from 2008, was in charge of immunohistochemical analyses of various animal organ tissues. Drs. Saitoh S. and Yurika conduct morphofunctional research on living mouse kidneys and livers using the in vivo cryotechniques.