Our final　Goal is that rescue for the patient suffered from psychiatric
and neurological diseases.

 We attempt to clarify the cause of various kinds of neuropsychological and neurological diseases, ex schizophrenia, autism, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson disease, and dementia.  Our final goal of these projects is establishments of new pharmaceutical treatment for these diseases.  Our projects are shown as below.

1.            A new therapeutic tool for neurological disease; via induction of neurotrophic factors, nerve growth factor, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, neutotrophin-3, glial-derived neurotrophic factor.  Leu-Ile can increase these neurotrophic factors in brain by the i.p.  Now we try to develop Leu-Ile for Parkinson’s disease, addiction and Alzheimer disease

Alkam et al., Behav Brain Res. 210, 184-190 (2010), Niwa et al., Biol. Psychiatry, 62, 658-668 (2007), Niwa et al., Biol. Psychiatry, 61, 890-901 (2007), Cen et al., J. Neurosci., 26, 3335-3344 (2006), Nitta et al., J. Neurosci. Res., 78, 250-258 (2004)

2.            Novel molecules for the psychiatric diseases.

Cen et al., Mol. Psychiatry, 13, 451-463 (2008), Niwa et al., J. Neurosci., 27, 7604-7615 (2007), Furukawa-Hibi et al., NeuroReport  in press (2010)

3.             Mechanisms of nicotine and methamphetamine addiction.

4.             Pharmaceutical studies.

We used behavioral, biochemical and molecular Biological methods for the studies for making the diseases’ animal models.