【Education】
In recent years, consciousness of the self-medication is increasing among many people in Japan. Our department, named "Probiotic Science for Preventive Medicine,” has been started on April 1, 2016. We have established a system to evaluate the functionality of foods by clinical trial.  We also study about some health-benefit functions of the plant-derived lactic acid bacteria by cooperating with some private enterprises in a timely manner. The target is "the preventive improvement of a lifestyle-related disease and a neurodegenerative disease (including Alzheimer's dementia, Parkinson's disease, glaucoma) and the virus infectious disease" by the plant-derived lactic acid bacteria isolated from the plant sources. We will promote fundamental researches and practical studies on probiotics, from the pharmaceutical viewpoint.

This department is comprised of a food clinical trial section and the development study section. In the former section, "the clinical evaluation and preventive medicine project research center", where clinical trial evaluates functionality of the food, is installed. The latter section has “ Frontier Center for Microbiology”, which carries out mainly probiotic fundamental researches. Furthermore, we would like to contribute to the increment of the acquirer of the doctoral degree (pharmacology studies) by accepting graduate students and  foreign students positively.

【Research】
１．Prevention and improvement of fatty liver and obesity by plant-derived lactic acid bacteria
２．Prevention and improvement of the neuro-degenerative diseases by plant-derived lactic acid bacteria
３．Development of the next-generation therapeutic drug to infectious disease using probiotics
４．Meta genome analysis of the entero-bacterial flora and application to digestive organ diseases
５．Evaluation of benefits and safety of the various functional food by clinical trials.