Japanese

Research activities bridging basic knowledge and clinical needs are often called ‘translational research’.However, currently, cancer patients are sometimes diagnosed and treated depending on the status of a single gene or molecule. In this viewpoint, we now need not translation but a common language. Needless to say, for the advancement of medicine, basic research is prerequisite, as various novel technologies are based on physics, chemistry and mathematics. Particularly in biological researches, we simultaneously need various methodological approaches, because each biological phenomenon is complex. Our department therefore comprises five laboratories that specialize five basic biological methodologies, i.e. genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, pathology and systems biology. In order to integrate basic research into clinical oncology, we also need infrastructures such as biobanking of biomaterials obtained from cancer patients. We established a cancer biobank (‘Cancer Biothek’) in 1997 and have, to date, curated a number of tissue, DNA and RNA samples from more than 9000 patients. Our ‘Cancer Biothek’ is now widely regarded as an important cancer biomaterial archive in Japan. As pointed out above, gene-based diagnoses or treatments aim personalised medicine, where ‘biomarkers’ play a key role. Biomarkers are in fact qualitative (i.e. structural) or quantitative alterations of a single biomolecule in cancer cells or, sometimes, in somatic cells of an individual. Connections between these alterations and clinical significance are carefully confirmed by many clinical trials. However, in cancer cells, biomolecules variously alter their structures and quantities in each case, and, in detecting their alterations, there are always technical limits. Furthermore, our knowledge about physiological roles of each molecule is always limited. These limits sometimes make biomarkers out-of-focus and, consequently, render treatment less effective. Further and more detailed studies using various methodological approaches are required in each biomarker, and we aim this. Such efforts may finally lead to the establishment of more reliable biomarkers and, consequently, to truly personalised approaches for the more effective treatment of cancer patients.

As for research interests and activities in each laboratory, please contact at the below email addresses:

Cancer Genetics Laboratory (Head: Shinya Oda, M.D.) 

Cancer Biochemistry Laboratory

Cancer Molecular Biology Laboratory (Head: Soichi Takiguchi, D.Sci.) 

Cancer Pathology Laboratory (Head: Kenichi Taguchi, M.D.) 

Cancer Cell Biology Laboratory (Atsuhiko Hasegawa, Ph.D.) 

Cancer Biothek (Cancer Biobank)