Home
【Research Keyword】
Gastroenterological cancers, inflammatory bowel disease, Helicobacter pylori infection, Hepatitis virus infection, Polymorphism of human genome, Biomarker for gastroenterological diseases
【Recent highlights】
Antiviral treatments for chronic hepatitis C have drastically improved. In contrast, it is still difficult to achieve complete remission in treatment for chronic hepatitis B. Members of the hepatology research group are pouring their efforts into basic research about chronic hepatitis B. Based on findings from our research, we have started a clinical trial focused on treatment of patients with severe acute hepatitis B infection. Effective treatments to eliminate these viruses in chronically infected patients are needed to reduce the risk of liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The prevalence of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma has also increased recently in patients without hepatitis B and C infection. Therefore, we also perform basic and clinical research to clarify the etiology and pathogenesis in order to develop effective treatments for these patients.
The accuracy of preoperative diagnosis of gastroenterological tumors has been improved by the developments of extended endoscopic observation and magnifying endoscopy with narrow-band imaging (NBI). Since the apparatuses for therapeutic endoscopy have been progressed and the safety of therapeutic endoscopy has also been improved, gastrointestinal tract research group is conducting several clinical trials for magnifying the indication of therapeutic endoscopy. In July 2015, we also established the inflammatory bowel diseases center for the improvements of medical procedures and the intensification of the association between hospitals and patient advocates.
Since the number of patients with pancreas cancer is increasing in Japan, many basic and clinical researches have been progressing in order to develop novel anti-cancer drugs or to discover biomarkers for identifying early pancreas cancer. To identify pancreas cancer at earlier stage, members of pancreas research group are aggressively performing endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) and endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) in patients with pancreas cysts or chronic pancreatitis and are also searching biomarkers using blood or pancreatic fluid.
