Keio University · Medicine
Professor Kazuaki Taguchi's research lab specializes in the development of advanced biomaterials for medical applications, with a primary focus on protein-based drug and gene delivery systems. The lab explores the use of natural plasma proteins—particularly albumin and hemoglobin—as versatile platforms for creating safe, efficient, and targeted therapeutics. Key research directions include designing novel liposomal and nanoparticle systems that enhance drug circulation time, improve tumor targeting, and modulate immune responses through macrophage polarization. The lab also investigates artificial oxygen carriers for transfusion alternatives, aiming to overcome limitations of current blood products.
Figures are computed from collected data and may differ slightly.
Albumin, the most abundant protein in plasma, possesses some inherent beneficial structural and physiological characteristics that make it suitable for use as a drug delivery agent, such as an extraordinary drug-binding capacity and long blood retention, with a high biocompatibility. The use of these characteristics as a nanoparticle drug delivery system (DDS) offers several advantages, including a longer circulation time, lower toxicity, and more significant drug loading. To date, many innovati
Hemoglobin (Hb) is an ideal material for use in the development of an oxygen carrier in view of its innate biological properties. However, the vascular retention of free Hb is too short to permit a full therapeutic effect because Hb is rapidly cleared from the kidney via glomerular filtration or from the liver via the haptogloblin-CD 163 pathway when free Hb is administered in the blood circulation. Attempts have been made to develop alternate acellular and cellular types of Hb based oxygen carr
Macrophages play a central role in various inflammatory disorders and are broadly divided into two subpopulations, M1 and M2 macrophage. In the healing process in acute inflammatory disorders, shifting the production of M1 macrophages to M2 macrophages is desirable, because M1 macrophages secrete pro-inflammatory cytokines, whilst the M2 variety secrete anti-inflammatory cytokines. Previous findings indicate that when macrophages are treated with carbon monoxide (CO), the secretion of anti-infla
Paclitaxel (PTX)-loaded liposomes were developed with the goal of enhancing the effects of cancer treatment. Although loading substances into the lipid membrane of liposome cause some destabilization of the lipid membrane, PTX was nearly exclusively embedded in the lipid membrane of liposomes, due to its low water solubility. Hydrophobic drugs can be encapsulated into the inner core of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-encapsulated liposomes (BSA-liposome) via noncovalent binding to albumin. Since PTX
Gene therapy through systemic administration is expected to offer significant therapeutic potential against intractable cancers, including pancreatic cancer. One of the requirements for in vivo gene therapy is the development of a gene carrier with a high level of safety, transfection ability and tumour accumulation. Bovine serum albumin (BSA)-poly(2-dimethylaminoethyl methacrylate) (PDMAEMA) conjugation (BSA-PDMAEMA conjugation) could result in the development of a promising gene carrier. This
The development of artificial oxygen carriers has attracted considerable recent interest because of the increasing cost of collecting and processing blood, public concerns about the safety of blood products, complications from blood transfusions, military requirements for increased volumes of blood during military conflicts, and a decrease in the number of new donors. To overcome these problems, perfluorocarbon-based oxygen carriers as well as acellular- and cellular-type, hemoglobin-based oxyge
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