Our aim is to treat neuropsychiatic disorders by focusing on glial cells (Associate Professor Shirakawa) and serotonin neurons (Assistant Professor Nagayasu)
TRP channels (Dr. Shirakawa)
TRP channels respond a variety of natural stimuli such as heat, cold, reactive oxygen species, and mechanical stimuli. We investigate the role of TRP channels in pathophysiology of vascular dementia, neuropathic pain, and multiple sclerosis.
Despite its large contribution to therapeutics in psychiatric disorders, precise mechanism why serotonin neurons can treat or aggravate psychiatric disorders is still lacking. We aim to reveal the relationship between serotonergic projection and brain function by…
1) Neuroscientific approach: optogenetics, fiber photometry, in vivo ephys
2) Molecular biological approach: viral vectors, cell-type selective transcriptome and epigenome analysis
3) Deeplearning of chemical structures and pharmacological activities (see Sakai et al., 2021)
and ultimately seek the way to treat neuropsychiatric disorders
Publication list (Dr. Shirakawa): researchmap
Publication list (Dr. Nagayasu): researchmap, Google Scholar