Ichiro Nishimura, DDS, DMSc, DMD

Bone is one of the most frequent sites for breast and prostate cancers to metastasize. Primary symptoms of metastatic bone disease (MBD) include osteolysis and pain. The long-term goal of Dr. Ichiro Nishimura's laboratory is to elucidate the mechanism of MBD and to design clinically viable therapeutic modalities to alleviate the MBD symptoms.

His current projects focus on osteoclasts and peripheral sensory neurons. Osteoclasts are myeloid-derived immune cells specialized to resorb bone and have been shown to be highly activated in MBD. Nishimura's lab investigates the role of osteoclasts in MBD-related pathology as well as tumor promotion. MBD often manifests radiating pain due to cancer-induced neuropathy. His lab uses the sciatic nerve entrapment model in rats to test the effectiveness of cationized gelatin nanoparticles in order to manage painful neuropathy. The hyper-activated voltage-gated sodium channel was significantly attenuated by the nanoparticle delivery of shRNA, resulting in the prolonged pain-free behaviors. Expanding this Òproof-of-conceptÓ study, Nishimura's team is testing more translatable therapy designs.

Kaur K, Cook J, Park SH, Topchyan P, Kozlowska A, Ohanian N, Fang C, Nishimura I, Jewett A. Novel Strategy to Expand Super-Charged NK Cells with Significant Potential to Lyse and Differentiate Cancer Stem Cells: Differences in NK Expansion and Function between Healthy and Cancer Patients. Front Immunol. 2017 Apr 5;8:297. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2017.00297. eCollection 2017.

Subbiah N, Campagna J, Spilman P, Alam MP, Sharma S, Hokugo A, Nishimura I, John V. Deformable Nanovesicles Synthesized through an Adaptable Microfluidic Platform for Enhanced Localized Transdermal Drug Delivery. J Drug Deliv. 2017;2017:4759839. doi: 10.1155/2017/4759839. Epub 2017 Apr 5.

Hirai T, Mulpuri Y, Cheng Y, Xia Z, Li W, Ruangsri S, Spigelman I, Nishimura I. Aberrant plasticity of peripheral sensory axons in a painful neuropathy. Sci Rep. 2017 Jun 13;7(1):3407. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-03390-9.

Sun Y, Kaur K, Kanayama K, Morinaga K, Park S, Hokugo A, Kozlowska A, McBride WH, Li J, Jewett A, Nishimura I. Plasticity of Myeloid Cells during Oral Barrier Wound Healing and the Development of Bisphosphonate-related Osteonecrosis of the Jaw. J Biol Chem. 2016 Sep 23;291(39):20602-16. doi: 10.1074/jbc.M116.735795. Epub 2016 Aug 11.

Tseng HC, Kanayama K, Kaur K, Park SH, Park S, Kozlowska A, Sun S, McKenna CE, Nishimura I, Jewett A. Bisphosphonate-induced differential modulation of immune cell function in gingiva and bone marrow in vivo: role in osteoclast-mediated NK cell activation. Oncotarget. 2015 Aug 21;6(24):20002-25. Erratum in: Oncotarget. 2015 Dec 1;6(38):41398.