Development of neural network high-throughput screening devices--disease model chip
using iPS cell technologyTsuneo Urisu
Nagoya University, FIRST Research Center for Innovative Nanobio devices,
Furo-cho, Chikusaku, Nagoya, 646-8603 Japan
Neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
are intractable diseases, for which neither of cause and treatment methods
are known in spite of more than 100 years of researches. The biggest
reason is that the patient’s neurons cannot be sampled in their lifetime.
Recently mutated genes of patients are being identified. By transfecting
these mutated genes into animals, cloning of disease animal, the model
animals, was succeeded．Using these model animals, investigation of
origin of the disease and the development of medicines have been actively carried out.
However, any successful results have not been obtained. Concerning medicines, although it
was effective in the model animals, its effect was small in the human patients. I think that the
essential difficulty is contained in the model animal method, where causal genes are
excessively transfected into animals which originally have not such a disease. Revolutionary
change has been brought into this field by the invention of iPS technology. We can make the
neuron or neural networks by the differentiation of iPS cells induced from the skin or blood
cells of patients. By this method, we can make the in vitro neural network of the patient
him/her self, that is disease model chip, which expresses the disease characteristics. .
We have been, in recent several years, developing noble technology of neural network
formation, technology of multichannel ionchannel recording using incubation type planar
patch clamp and several imaging technologies such as Ca2+ imaging. And now, we are
considering to combining these technologies and iPS technology to originate the disease
model chip of ALS. We are now developing several technologies of, chip fabricaton, cell
seeding for noble neural network, integrated microfluidic device of multi-ionchannel
recordings, data analysis and differentiation of iPS cells in parallel. I will introduce in the
lecture about the present stage of our developments.
Tsuneo Urisu
Professor, Dr.
Nagoya University, FIRST Research Center for Innovative Nanobio Devices,
Furo-cho, Chikusaku, Nagoya, 646-8603 Japan
Phone : +81-52-747-6743, Fax. : +81-52-747-6751,
Email : t.urisu@nanobio.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Personal History
1964~1968 Department of Chemistry, Fuculty of Science, The
Univ. of Tokyo.
1968~1973 Graduated Course, Department of Chemistry, Fuculty of Science, The Univ. of Tokyo.
1973 NTT Basic Research Laboratory
1983 NTT LSI Laboratories
1992 Pofessor, Institute for Molecular Science
2011 Professor Nagoya University, FIRST Research Center for Inoovative
Nanobiodevices.
THE CHINA-JAPAN SYMPOSIUM ON NANOMEDICINE
Nanjing, China, October 27-29, 2013
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