Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine

• 動物の自然発生疾患の病態解析
• AAアミロイドーシスの発症機序に関する研究
• 疾患モデル動物を用いた実験病理学的研究

病気にはストーリーがあります。私達が顕微鏡で覗いている組織切片は、その一瞬を切り取ったスナップ写真のようなもので、病原体と細胞の攻防、病変形成に至るまでの長い年月など様々な情報が詰まっています。私が学生だった頃、「病理は◯と△の違いがわかれば出来る、実に簡単な学問だ」と言われたことがありますが、入室当初は不思議と同じものを目で追っていても、なかなか変化に気が付きません。最初は教科書との絵合わせから始まり、経験と知識が蓄積していくことで、切片に込められたストーリーが“みえる”様になる感動を皆さんに味わってもらい、もっと病理を身近なものに感じてもらいたいと思います。

Research using industrial animals presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. My research truly begins the moment I encounter an interesting case in my daily pathology searches or the moment I find hidden connections among several cases. I've started to study amyloidosis and neurodegenerative disease.

Amyloid is an abnormal protein that shines a minerally green like the aurora when observed under special conditions. Despite the fact that amyloidosis was first described all the way back when pathology became an established field of research, its mechanism of onset remains unclear even now, some 200 years later. Our university has collected a great number of bovine amyloidosis cases, and we use specimens from these cases to analyze cases. In addition, to gradually elucidate complex phenomena, an amyloidosis mouse model has been developed and used to investigate the disease.

Neurodegenerative diseases are neurological diseases in which the neurons and glial cells that constitute the brain are gradually injured and atrophied, and in human beings, the above-mentioned diseases are subdivided into Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and others. In recent years, the accumulation of abnormal proteins has attracted attention as a cause of neurodegenerative disease. Although animals suffer from several diseases that are equivalent to these, there are many unknown lesions that have not been established as diseases. I constantly keep an ear out for even the minutest change.

A commonality between Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease is their ability to affect various animals, including human beings. In addition, although pathological diagnoses can be made, there are no effective treatments. And these are multifactorial diseases with various causes. Recently, we've been trying to analyze genes and proteins in addition to pursuing general pathological searches.

The ultimate goal of this study is to obtain useful findings to elucidate the pathology of these intractable diseases and develop diagnostic and therapeutic methods. The research aims to unravel magnificent but difficult puzzles that pathologists have long faced, and that are difficult to solve by an individual researcher working alone. In pursuing my goal, I'll interact with researchers in various fields, such as veterinary medicine, medicine, molecular biology and statistics.

In side projects with other professors, I conduct collaborative research, such as experimental pathology research, infection experiments and tumor research on small animals.

• Pathological analysis of natural occurrence diseases of domestic animals.
• Development of diagnositic methods for AA amyloidosis.
• Understunding moleular mechanisms of experimental AA amyloidosis.
• Proteomic analysis of precasur proteins of animal amyloidoses.
• Neuropathological analysis of bovine neurodegenerative diseases.