General Description of the Department

Our department was restarting in April 2005, Takahiro Taira, Associated Professor at Graduate Scholl of Pharmaceutical Sciences Hokkaido University, took over as a professor and started to research in new scientific fields. For education of our faculty, our department has been in charge of education in Biology and Molecular & Cellular Biology in general education and graduate course. In July 2008, Dr. Masahiro Fujimuro took over as an Associate Professor of department.

Faculty Members

Reserch Focuses

1,Molecular mechanism of DJ-1 protein
DJ-1 was first identified by our group as a novel candidate of the oncogene in 1998. Furthermore, DJ-1 is a responsible gene for recessively-inherited, early-onset familial parkinsonism (PARK7), and expression of DJ-1 has been shown to be upregulated by oxidative stress. DJ-1 is a multi-functional protein and has a various roles in transcription regulation and fertility, and loss of its functions is thought to be the onset of Pakinson’s disease, cancer and male-fertility. To clarified profiles of DJ-1 is important in prevention of various diseases and developing remedy.
2,The treatment and prevention of lethal arrhythmias
3,The development of antiviral drugs for herpesvirus.
The goal of our projects is the control of virus-infection by elucidation of pathogenesis and the development of antiviral therapy and diagnostic method.
Currently, we focus on KSHV (also known as HHV-8), is associated with the malignancies Kaposis sarcoma and primary effusion lymphoma. The latency-associated nuclear antigen (LANA) protein is believed to play an important role in KSHV latency and tumorigenesis. LANA interacts with tumor suppressor Rb and abolishes p53-mediated apoptosis as well as up-regulating the Wnt-pathway. We reported that LANA stabilizes beta-catenin by binding to
the negative regulator GSK-3, causing activation of Wnt-pathway. Further studies to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of KSHV-induced dysregulation of host Wnt-pathway are under way.