Staff and specialities
Senior Assistant Professor: Akinori Matsuo
Neuroscience
Outline of the department
Our unit's aim is to produce appropriate animal models for generating more precise and translatable information about neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease. Shiga University has one of Japan's largest colonies of Macaca fascicularis. Taking advantage of these valuable resources, we hope to establish non-human primate disease models. Reliable etiologies or therapies for the majority of neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric disorders, and developmental disorders remain to be elucidated, and appropriate animal models are an important part of addressing this knowledge gap. Many rodent-based animal models exist and have provided a lot of useful information. However, extrapolating the data from such models to understand human pathophysiology is not always precise enough due to the significant species differences between rodents and human. Non-human primate animal models are therefore needed to bridge the gap despite the associated technical challenges and ethical issues.
As a start, we are currently trying development of a lentiviral vector system for gene transfer into fertilized eggs of monkeys, and establishment of an AAV vector system for persistent expression of pathogenic molecules in adult experimental animals, collaborating with Research Center for Animal Life Science, Shiga University of Medical Science.
