vol.36 Department of Biomedical Oncology

The Department of Biomedical Oncology established in 2018 is a department established by Professor Masahiro Sonoshita who had completed five years of study at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the United States. The word “control” in the department’s name in Japanese represents his desire to make cancer a “controllable disease” by understanding the mechanisms of cancers and establishing preventive and therapeutic measures.

“To control cancer, we must first answer the essential question, ‘What is cancer?’. Therefore, the main theme of this department is to elucidate the pathogenic mechanisms of how cancers develop. Then, we want to develop new therapeutics for cancer treatment. In addition to surgery, cancer treatment includes anti-cancer drugs and gene therapy, and our ultimate goals are understanding the pathogenic mechanism and the development of treatment methods,” Professor Sonoshita says.

In elucidating the mechanisms of cancer development, he discovered in 2001 that growth of benign tumors in the large intestine is promoted by epithelial-stromal interaction. In this process, one of the bioactive lipid prostaglandins PGE2 and its receptor EP2 function as the key signaling mediators. Based upon these findings, he proposed a novel strategy for preventing and treating intestinal tumors using antagonist drugs to EP2 receptor.

In the laboratory, they keep transgenic flies in 11 incubators set at different temperatures ranging 16-27℃ depending on experiments. They carry a yeast-derived system for controlling transgene expression, which enables us to generate fly models reproducing various genetic abnormalities in patients leading to diseases phenotypes (Figure 1). Through fly screening the lab can efficiently narrow down the number of genes and chemicals to verify in mammals, thereby shortening the time to clinical application.

“In terms of clinical application, we are focusing on orally available drugs which are easy to use. We can feed chemicals by infusing it into fly food. We are also interested in determining the effect of daily beverage and food, therefore we are testing their effects on phenotypes of our flies through feeding,” Professor says.

Professor Sonoshita also believes that it is important for specialists with various backgrounds together in cancer research.
“For example, pharmaceutical researchers in the lab can their new connections with patient care and specimens. Also, doctors can learn about how to generate better medicines for clinical use. These settings make the lab an attractive incubation space where lab members can complement each other and proceed with research,” Professor says. “Students from Graduate School of Dental Medicine are also enrolled in this department, where collaboration between medicine, dentistry and pharmacy is actively carried out. Students from School of Science and School of Engineering are also developing wonderful research. I do hope that we together generate various research methods and results basing upon our curiosity.”