The 78th In Silico Megabank Research Seminar will be held on Thursday, November 16, 2016.

This Time, we will be welcoming Dr. Masashi Mizokami, Research Institute, National Center for Global Health and Medicine as our lecturer, and he will be speaking on “Examination of host factors for Hepatitis B virus infectious disease”.

・Date/Time: November 16 (Thursday) 6:30 pm‐7:30 pm
・Venue: Conference Room(3rd Floor), Tohoku Medical Megabank Building
・Title: Examination of host factors for Hepatitis B virus infectious disease
・Lecturer: Masashi Mizokami（Research Institute, National Center for Global Health and Medicine） 

・Abstract: Liver cancer is the fourth leading cause of death from cancer in Japan, and 70% of the incidence of liver cancer is attributable to Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and Hepatitis C virus (HCV). Moreover, according of WHO, it is globally the seventh leading cause of death from cancer, meaning that it is a significant worldwide public health issue. For HCV, recent advancement of treatment has steadily decreased the number of liver cancer caused by HCV; it is expected that it will be rare disease by 2030. However, the situation with HBV-related cancers is different. Current treatment can only inhibit the growth of HBV, and the prospects for the clearance of HBV, which is the basic remedy, are still far from certain. In general, the pathology of infectious diseases is determined by the interaction of causative pathogens and infected individuals. However, only the viral factor has been examined for HBV-infected patients because there is technological difficulty to examine the interaction although it has been revealed that about 90% of HBV-infected individuals have no symptoms in their lifetime whereas about 10% of HBV-infected individuals develop liver cancer. Despite research effort, no difference has been found between the HBV-infected individuals without subjective symptoms in their lifetime and with cancer progression.
Thus, we collected genome and serum of 3500 samples whose clinical data were entered by nationwide specialized medical clinics for liver. These clinics had already completed various procedures such as IRB in the past 10 years. From the aspect of viral factors, we are currently conducting GWAS for HBVDNA sequencing and host factors. As research grant was provided to us by AMED, we would like to further reveal detailed host factors from joint research with ToMMo. Therefore, in this seminar, I would like to introduce the current situation and issues associated with HBV study and discuss the possibility for joint research with ToMMo. 

・Organizer: Masao Nagasaki