I received my Ph.D. degree in 2003 from the Department of Immunology from Yokohama City University in Japan. My Ph.D. thesis focused on the intracellular and molecular regulation of cross-presentation pathway in DCs. After that, under the guidance of Dr. Minami, I worked as an Instructor and then as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology at Yokohama City University School of Medicine in Japan. My past interest was focused on understanding the cellular and molecular effects of DCs responsible for inducing both tolerance and immunological protection. One specific area of interest was to investigate the mechanisms how tolerogenic DCs regulate the key cellular interaction, cell metabolism, signaling pathway using proteomics analysis.  Current research areas involve the roles of tolerogenic DCs to generate the regulatory T cells or regulatory NKT cells, and also a development of an immunotherapy using a tolerogenic DC population or other regulatory cells, able to protect against the autoimmune diseases or allergy.

I joined Dr. Vijay Kuchroo’s laboratory in October 2007 to obtain further academic training. My current work is about the role of TIM-3 on the regulation of tolerance by DCs using TIM-3 knockout mice