Development of Fundamental Technologies for Diagnosis and Therapy Based upon Epigenome Analysis

Outline

For healthy life and development of novel strategies for disease prevention, diagnosis, and therapy, this research area focuses on discovery of new principles and establishment of fundamental medical technologies based on epigenome analyses accompanied by biological analyses.
Specifically, this research area invites proposals that identify epigenome alterations useful for identification of etiologies or those critically involved in development and progression of cancers or other chronic disorders, such as arteriosclerosis, diabetes, neurological diseases, and autoimmune diseases. The findings should lead to identification of novel mechanisms for induction of epigenome alteration or maintenance of epigenomes or to innovative strategies for disease prevention, diagnosis, and therapy. This area also invites proposals that, by comparing epigenome profiles during stem cell differentiation, reveal mechanisms of cellular differentiation and establish technologies for robust directed differentiation of various cells to specific lineages. Furthermore, this area invites proposals that develop key technologies for more efficient analysis of methylomes and histone modifications, and for control of epigenomes.
In this research area, JST cooperates with the International Human Epigenome Consortium (IHEC) through some proposals.

Strategic Sector

Creation of the basic technologies for disease analysis and elucidation of stem cell differentiation mechanisms by using epigenomic comparison toward the realization of treatments and regenerative medicine used to prevent, diagnose, and treat diseases

Research Projects