Homepage address
https://www.med.tottori-u.ac.jp/regmed/

Institute of Regenerative Medicine and Biofunction
Department of Genetic Medicine and Regenerative Therapeutics
Division of Regenerative Medicine and Therapeutics

Staff

Professor: Ichiro Hisatome
Associate professor: Yasuaki Shirayoshi
Assistant professor: Motokazu Tsuneto
Assistant professor (non teniro track): Peili Li

Features of the Division

Regenerative medicine is novel therapy to compensate for loss of physical function in patients by means of stem cells. In our laboratory, we use human adult stem cells and embryonic totipotent stem cells involving both embryonic stem cells (ES cells) and iPS cells. In our university hospital, we seek to transplant cardiac myocytes derived from iPS cells to patients suffering from cardiovascular disease and transplant adipose derived stem cells to patients receiving surgical operation due to breast cancer. So far, we have successfully transplanted adipose derived stem cells into 5 patients receiving surgical operation due to breast cancer, which successfully reconstructed their breast. On the other hand, we generated human ES cell and iPS cell-derived cardiac myocytes involving nodal cells and conduction cells. We discovered a novel marker for collecting nodal and conduction cells from human ES/iPS cell-derived differentiated cardiomyocytes. Nodal cell derived from ES cells have been transplanted into a bradycardia model to drive the host heart, which can respond to the autonomic nerve stimulation.
We also found that molecular chaperone could stabilize the ion channel proteins to treat the lethal arrhythmias in long QT syndrome via regulation of endoplasmic reticulum associated degradation. These chaperone experiments are mainly conducted by many Ph.D. course students from Asian country, who win several awards from Japanese Circulation Society.
Our research tergets are not only cardiovascular but also endocrine and metabolism as well. We found a pendrin autoantibody, a new thyroid autoantibody, which is useful for diagnoses of autoimmune and inflammatory thyroid disease.
We recently find that organic anion transporters such as uric acid transporters (UATs) are commonly expressed in different organs and intracellular accumulation of urate via activation of UATs might play an important role for organ damage under hyperuricemia. Based on this idea, we are now editing the guideline for hyperuricemia and gout in Japan.

Research areas

•Regeneration of the heart using human embryonic stem cells and human iPS cells
•Engineering of biological pacemaker and conduction system cells and their application to treating arrhythmias
•Mechanism on the regeneration of ischemic heart failure using adipose derived stem cell sheets
•Processing mechanisms of ion channels, contractile proteins and the development of chemical chaperones
•Purine metabolism and its implication to lifestyle related diseases
•Molecular endocrinology and its application to disease