Department of Molecular Protozoology

Subjects:

1. Development of a recombinant vaccine based on the malaria protein SERA.
2. Development of a novel vaccine adjuvant and elucidation of its mechanism of action.
3. Study on host-parasite interaction of malaria infection.
4. Study on phylogeny and evolution of SERA multigene family in the genus Plasmodium.

Published Papers

1. Identification of Plasmodium malariae, a human malaria parasite, in imported chimpanzees.

   Toshiyuki Hayakawa, Nobuko Arisue, Toshifumi Udono, Hirohisa Hirai, Jetsumon Sattabongkot, Tomoko Toyama, Takafumi Tsuboi, Toshihiro Horii and Kazuyuki Tanabe

   PLoS One, 4 (10), e7412, 2009.
2. Innate immune control of nucleic acid-based vaccine immunogenicity.

   Shohei Koyama, Cevayir Coban, Taiki Aoshi, Toshihiro Horii, Shizuo Akira and Ken J Ishii

   Expert Rev Vaccines, 8 (8), 1099-1107, 2009.
3. Direct metagenomic detection of viral pathogens in nasal and fecal specimens using an unbiased high-throughput sequencing approach.

   Shota Nakamura, Cheng-Song Yang, Naomi Sakon, Mayo Ueda, Takahiro Tougan, Akifumi Yamashita, Naohisa Goto, Kazuo Takahashi, Teruo Yasunaga, Kazuyoshi Ikuta, Tetsuya Mizutani, Yoshiko Okamoto, Michihira Tagami, Ryoji Morita, Norihiro Maeda, Jun Kawai, Yoshihide Hayashizaki, Yoshiyuki Nagai, Toshihiro Horii, Tetsuya Iida and Takaaki Nakaya

   PLoS ONE, 4 (1), e4219, 2009.
4. A signaling polypeptide derived from an innate immune adaptor molecule can be harnessed as a new class of vaccine adjuvant.

   Kouji Kobiyama, Fumihiko Takeshita, Ken J Ishii, Shohei Koyama, Taiki Aoshi, Shizuo Akira, Asako Sakaue-Sawano, Atsushi Miyawaki, Yuko Yamanaka, Hisashi Hirano, Koichi Suzuki and Kenji Okuda

   J Immunol, 182 (3), 1593-1601, 2009.

Link

http://www.biken.osaka-u.ac.jp/ .