Our research unit was established this year in response to the high demand 40for investigating the extremely contagious disease, COVID-19 (Coro-navirus disease 2019) in both public and research communities during the pandemic. We believe that IMS strengths in immunology, genomics and data science, and their established research field network will help to understand what factors exacerbate the disease and to develop next-generation vaccines. Our newly established BSL-3 facilities are capable of handling animal infection experiments, virus characterization and manipulating patient materials.We have three major achievements: First, in a collaboration with KEIO hospital, we isolated and patent-filed human broadly neutralizing antibod-ies against several SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC) from COVID-19 convalescent patients. These antibodies are expected to be used for human im-munotherapy in the near future. Second, our recent discovery of a new vaccine adjuvant, vitamin D3, is being applied to the COVID-19 vaccine. The vaccine is designed as a “patch” vaccine to facilitate herd immunity ideally without using conventional needles. Third, we generated several animal models for COVID-19, including one in which the human ACE2 (Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2) gene is introduced into mice. These model animals enable us to evaluate the efficiency and safety of newly developed vaccines or anti-virus drugs in vivo. The rapid establishment of biosafety laboratory infrastructure gave us a unique research opportunity to investigate the mechanism of immune escape during SARS-CoV-2 breakthrough infections by participating in a consortium of COVID-19 research in the Kanto area of Japan, supported by AMED (the Agency for Medical Research and Development).Our goal is to provide the basis of therapeutic intervention for infectious diseases. Currently ongoing fruitful internal and external collaborations will lead to discoveries that will help achieve this goal.Figure: A schematic view of our research strength and directionThe newly established BSL-3 provided a unique oppor-tunity to perform infectious disease research, leading to inventions.Recent Major PublicationsMiyauchi E, Taida T, Kawasumi M, Ohkusa T, Sato N, Ohno H. Analysis of colonic mucosa-associated microbiota using endoscopically collected lavage. Sci Rep 12, 1758 (2022)Takeuchi T, Miyauchi E, Kanaya T, Kato T, Nakanishi Y, Watanabe T, Kitami T, Taida T, Sasaki T, Negishi H, Shima-moto S, Matsuyama A, Kimura I, Williams IR, Ohara O, Ohno H. Acetate differentially regulates IgA reactivity to commensal bacteria. Nature 595, 560-564 (2021)Miyauchi K, Adachi Y, Tonouchi K, Yajima T, Harada Y, Fukuyama H, Deno S, Iwakura Y, Yoshimura A, Hasegawa H, Yugi K, Fujii SI, Ohara O, Takahashi Y, Kubo M. Influ-enza virus infection expands the breadth of antibody responses through IL-4 signalling in B cells. Nat Com-mun 12, 3789 (2021)Infectious Diseases Research UnitUnit Leader: Haruhiko Koseki
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