Ninomiya Lab

Cancer is a major issue in personal, familial and global health concerns. Colorectal cancer (CRC), including colon cancer and rectal cancer is the second cause of cancer-related deaths and the third most common cancer in humankind in the world. Our ultimate goal is to diminish the number of people suffering from colorectal cancer and increase cancer survivors with their happiest lives.

Surgery is one of the best options right now to treat this disease, however, it has brought a reduction in quality of life afterward because of the invasive and inherent risk associated with it. The other choice of medical treatments has been limited for patients with colorectal cancer. As you know, Immunotherapies for cancer offer a beacon of hope to improve the lives of patients with many kinds of cancers, still, only rare case, which is 4% of CRC patients with metastatic cancer, high microsatellite instability (MSI-H), and mismatch-repair deficiency (dMMR), is approved to use Immune checkpoint inhibitors by the FDA (Ganesh K et al, Nat Med., 2019). This is an urgent need for new therapeutic drugs for saving patients with colorectal cancer.

Furthermore, early diagnosis and early start treatment is the key to maximizing positive outcomes in patients with cancers, however, there are obstacles to early diagnosis of colorectal cancer. Colonoscopy is the best tool to diagnose CRC and is recommended for people over 50 years old, even though the patient population of younger adults with CRC has been increasing and has a higher mortality rate compared to those over 50 (Barr RD et al, East Afr Med J, 1972, You YN et al, Arch Intern Med, 2012). There is little or no other tests available to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer (Lauby-Secretan B, et al, N Engl J Med, 2018).

These highlight the requirements of novel therapeutic drugs and non-invasive screening methods for colorectal cancer. We have been developing novel Immunotherapies with no adverse events for all patients with colorectal cancer and less-invasive early diagnostic methods using our new finding of a novel subset of regulatory T cells.