In today’s stressful society, reducing and adapting to stress is important for maintaining good health. Stress occurs continuously at not only the individual level, but also the cellular and organ level, and failure of the innate stress response to deal with chronic stress can result in various diseases that affect life expectancy and accelerate aging.
For example, when we have a western-style meal, we often consume excess calories. Metabolic organs, including endocrine tissue, respond to this metabolic stress and adapted accordingly to ensure a health state. If stress becomes chronic and is not dealt with, an excessive response can occur that has a serious impact on the immune and nervous systems. Thus, systems which under normal circumstances maintain homeostasis adopt an aggressive stress-response mode which can lead to the development of various diseases that threaten health.
If we can understand the stress response mechanism at the cellular and organ levels in relation to intensity, type, and duration of stress, we can develop treatments for neural and psychiatric disorders, as well as the following lifestyle-related diseases: cancer, allergy, diabetes, sleep disorders, and depression. However, the molecular mechanisms of stress remain unresolved.
With this project, diseases that develop and progress by degeneration of various systems should be investigated to determine the molecular basis of specific stress response systems to everyday stresses, such as those of the environment and food, at the cellular and organ level. Thus, we aim to build a research base for realizing healthy life expectancy.
The stress response system has been clarified at the molecular level against stress stimuli from specific environmental factors, such as consumption of excess calories and nutrient deficiencies, allergens, exercise, infection, radiation, ultraviolet radiation, and psychosocial stress, by analyzing the influence of stress severity and timing. Finally, we are establishing a stress research center for improving the diagnosis of and developing cures for cancer, lifestyle-related diseases, and psychiatric disorders that threaten health and life expectancy.