Neurology
Genome biology
Experimental pathology
TSUJIKAWA Koyo
Starting year 2023
Nagoya University
Institute for Advanced Research/Graduate School of Medicine
YLC Designated Assistant Professor
Research fields
Research Interests
Neurodegeneration
Tau
Dementia
Parkinsonism
Myopathy
Professional Memberships
Japanese Society of Neurology
The Japanese Society of Internal Medicine
The Japan Neuroscience Society
Main research topics
Tauopathies are a heterogeneous group of neurodegenerative disorders characterized by abnormal tau aggregation in the brain, and include Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common dementia worldwide, and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), which can present variable neuropsychiatric symptoms. While amyloid-β is well-known as a trigger of tau aggregation in the AD brain and could be a promising therapeutic target for AD, the mechanism that promotes tau aggregation in non-AD tauopathies (e.g., PSP) largely remains elusive. Recently, we have focused on filamin-A on reference to genomic data from monozygotic twins concordant for PSP and large-scale cohorts of Japanese patients with tauopathies, and shown that filamin-A drives tau aggregation with cellular and animal experiments. Now we comprehensively analyze the filamin-A transgenic mice by integrated multi-omics approaches ranging from epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and phenomics. Furthermore, we also conduct the morphological analysis for patient-derived iPS cells using the AI-based high-throughput and high-content methods. We screen candidate compounds targeting filamin-A and plan original translational research for tauopathies.
Representative papers
Tsujikawa K, Hamanaka K, Riku Y, et al. Actin-binding protein filamin-A drives tau aggregation and contributes to progressive supranuclear palsy pathology. Science Advances. 2022;8:eabm5029.
Tsujikawa K, Hasegawa Y, Yokoi S, et al. Chronological changes of 123I-MIBG myocardial scintigraphy and clinical features of Parkinson’s disease. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2015;86:945-51.
Research URL
researchmap https://researchmap.jp/koyo_tsujikawa
YouTube”Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine Department of Neurology” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRugilLcR3s
Global issues to be solved through this project
Integrating genomics and biophysics to develop a new drug for tauopathy
Tauopathies not only damage the health of an individual, but place a severe burden on his/her family caregivers. The increase in the number of patients with tauopathies in the global aging society has a serious social and economic influence. The development of effective treatment for tauopathy thus is an urgent global matter. In spite of the global intensive competition, there are still few successful drugs for tauopathies in clinical use. Therefore, it is important to devise a conceptually innovative and pathogenesis-based strategy through a multidisciplinary approach and to build an international network for stimulating interaction between researchers. Through this project, we aim 1) to discover a novel drug for tauopathy through industry-academia collaboration with pharmaceutical companies and biotech firms, 2) to elucidate the dynamics of tau aggregation through interdisciplinary research spanning the fields of medicine and physics, 3) to collaborate with the international tauopathy genome cohort. Our goal is not only for clinical application of a single seed, but for construction of a research platform that enables continuous drug discovery for tauopathies.