Research Laboratories and Education & Research Centers

Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs produced from natural sources including kampo medicines as well as those used as home remedies, folk medicines and traditional medicines. It provides a thorough understanding of the plant origins of individual crude drugs and clarifies their biological characteristics, active ingredients and medicinal effects.

Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs produced from natural sources including kampo medicines as well as those used as home remedies, folk medicines and traditional medicines. It provides a thorough understanding of the plant materials of individual crude drugs and clarifies their biological characteristics, active ingredients and medicinal effects. It also helps improve techniques for the development of crude drugs including processing, storage, identification and assay methods.

Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs produced from natural sources including kampo medicines as well as those used as home remedies, folk medicines and traditional medicines. It provides a thorough understanding of the plant origins of individual crude drugs and clarifies their biological characteristics, active ingredients and medicinal effects.

Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs produced from natural sources including kampo medicines as well as those used as home remedies, folk medicines and traditional medicines. It provides a thorough understanding of the plant materials of individual crude drugs and clarifies their biological characteristics, active ingredients and medicinal effects. It also helps improve techniques for the development of crude drugs including processing, storage, identification and assay methods.

Studying the answer to "How do kampo medicines and medicinal plants work?"

Our laboratory examines the quality of medicinal plants and crude drugs scientifically. In recent years, the demand for kampo products, and those of higher quality, has been increasing. The quality of individual crude drugs contained in kampo medicines varies depending on the variety and species of plants used. Therefore, we are currently systematically analyzing the quality of crude drugs mainly derived from citrus plants and inorganic sources. We are also conducting pharmacological evaluation and studies to elucidate the mechanism of action of crude drugs since their medicinal effects and underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. Due to the influence of expanded transportation and global warming, epidemics of infectious diseases that used to be considered specific to the tropics have now been reported in other areas. Traditional medicines in endemic areas are thought to be effective to treat infections based on experience, but sufficient scientific evidence for their effectiveness is lacking. Therefore, we are exploring components in tropical medicinal plants that have inhibitory effects on enzymes or antiparasitic effects, to develop new medicines for the treatment of tropical infectious diseases based on traditional knowledge. In addition, as part of industry-academia-government collaboration projects, we are developing functional products made from the branded citrus fruit "Shonan Gold," which is only grown in the western part of Kanagawa prefecture, to help revitalize the area.

Training pharmacists who can offer appropriate kampo medicines to patients and clinicians

The Kampo Pharmaceutics Laboratory aims to train pharmacists who can offer kampo medicines that are appropriate for each patient. Although it is widely known that kakkonto is a medicine for common colds, few people understand clearly when, how, and by whom it should be taken. They may wonder, "Can it be taken at the beginning of a cold?" That's correct. Next they might ask, "If I catch a cold in the morning, should it be taken in the afternoon?", or "If I caught a cold a week ago, is it no longer effective as the early stage has passed already?" Shouldn't pharmacists be able to answer these basic questions appropriately? It would be helpful if someone could answer them. Our role is to train many pharmacists who have such knowledge. Students in their fifth year, who are conducting their final year project in our laboratory, study kampo medicine intensively, from morning till night, when they do not have practical training. It is not easy, but they are studying very hard to become proficient pharmacists. We would appreciate your encouragement for Yokohama University of Pharmacy students. Pharmacists with expertise in kampo medicine will graduate soon. They look forward to seeing you in the future.

Aiming to enhance the benefits of treatment with kampo medicines

The benefits of kampo medicines in treatment in modern medicine are increasingly recognized. Kampo medicines can be used for various diseases, and recently, the combination of Western and kampo medicines for cancer treatment has attracted intense interest. There are also increasing opportunities for pharmacists as medication experts to dispense and provide advice on kampo medicines in clinical practice. Our laboratory gathers basic knowledge on treatment with kampo medicines from important classical medical books such as "Shanghan Lun" and "Jin Gui Yao Lue" and then enhances the benefits of treatment with kampo medicines through basic and clinical research as well as literature searches. We aim to produce pharmacists with a strong background in kampo medicines.

Understanding the body's reaction to drugs

Medicines cure diseases in our body. They are not magic powders but are designed to act on the body. The Laboratory for the Study of Drug Reactions clarifies how pharmaceutical and crude drug components react in the body. Based on the results, we design chemical structures that fit the body and combine with organic chemical reactions, creating bioactive substances.


We aim to control chemical reactions in vivo as well as in vitro. Through such research on drug design, we help nurture outstanding individuals who can apply the basic knowledge of medicines to health care practice.

Nucleic acid-targeted drug discovery: Aiming to develop new medicines based on the structural biology of nucleic acids.

Pharmaceuticals (drugs) ultimately bind to various molecules within the body, having an effect on the body's specific physiological reaction, whether as a main effect or side effect. Previously, nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) have been regarded as molecules that convey only genetic information. However, in recent years, nucleic acid molecules with several physiological functions have been discovered, and their unique three-dimensional structure and dynamic changes have led to potential new drug targets. We are investigating interactions between low molecular weight compounds (drugs) and potential drug target nucleic acid molecules, by analyzing three-dimensional static and dynamic structures and chemical properties of nucleic acid molecules, which depend on the base sequence of the molecules, using spectroscopy such as ultraviolet-visible (UV/VIS), circular dichroism (CD) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and other analytical instruments including a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM).

Aiming for environmentally-friendly pharmaceutical synthesis: Development of reaction systems that are oriented toward green chemistry

In drug discovery, the development process has conventionally begun with synthesizing and examining various analogues of leading compounds with therapeutic potential. This includes combinatorial chemistry by which a wide variety of compounds are synthesized. In recent years, the search for target molecules for pharmaceuticals has been based on information obtained by bioinformatics, and the development of personalized medicine is also attracting attention.


Medicinal chemistry is a field that provides a foundation for drug discovery, including drug synthesis, characterization, understanding of the mechanism of action, efficacy analysis and toxicity testing.


In recent years, the development of highly efficient reaction systems based on green chemistry is an important challenge from a global environment point of view, as this allows the downsizing of enormous pharmaceutical manufacturing plants and decrease in pollution by reducing by-products.


Synthesizing medicines that are essential to our lives with more environmentally-friendly reaction systems is important to reduce next-generation diseases and protect our precious environment.

Aiming to produce pharmacists with expertise in pharmacokinetics, who can contribute to society

Drug development requires two processes: drug discovery and clarifying the safety and efficacy of those drugs. Here you will acquire the knowledge and technology to clarify the fate of drugs in vivo and predict and evaluate their safety and efficacy in humans.

Building a rationale for medications and educating pharmacists to provide medications based on appropriate evidence

To provide effective treatment with medication, it is necessary to understand the pathophysiology of the disease and to select suitable drugs based on an appropriate rationale. Higher quality medications can be achieved by individually selecting the dose and type of drug that suits each patient's condition, such as gender, age, nutritional status and interaction (mixing) with concomitant drugs. In pharmacotherapeutics, you will additionally learn methodologies to provide more effective medications from a patient-centered approach, such as how to select drugs in the acute and chronic phases, timing of switching between them and methods to determine the therapeutic effect.

Research to quantitatively predict drug efficacy and side effects that may differ depending on an individual patient's characteristics and drug interactions

When a drug is taken, it enters the digestive tract, where the dissolved drug is absorbed into the blood stream through the membrane of the digestive tract. Then, part of the drug is converted to other forms mainly in the liver, and the remainder reaches the target site through the blood to cure the disease. At the target site, it acts on receptors, enzymes, bacteria invading from outside or neoplasms generated by genetic alterations, and ultimately the drug works, which means that it shows a "medicinal effect." Recently, it has become possible to formulate this series of events mathematically. In other words, we can now predict the medicinal effects using mathematical formulas. Furthermore, the prediction gives a range of variations and probabilities rather than a single value. The Clinical Pharmacology Research Laboratory is conducting research to predict the quantitative changes in drugs and the degree of responses. We are currently focusing on the liver, kidneys, brain and eyes as target sites, and by using cells and animal models, we are attempting to capture changes in bioactive substances in response to drugs and express them in mathematical formulas. In addition, there are individual differences in how patients respond to drugs. Some of these differences can be explained by genotypes. We are looking for biomarkers that can predict a patient's drug responses, for example, common endogenous substances. These studies are carried out in collaboration with researchers from other research institutes, hospitals and companies. We have started to examine whether the formulas and laws we have derived can be reflected in clinical data.

Aiming to produce pharmacists who can contribute to clinical practice through pharmaceutical technology research

The Clinical Pharmaceutics Research Laboratory aims to produce pharmacists who can take a more practical approach in clinical practice, such as selecting drugs and deciding dosage and administration routes according to individual disease conditions, based on accumulated knowledge in pharmaceutics and pharmaceutical technology. In our research we are investigating the challenges encountered in clinical practice and applying our findings. We offer modules including Clinical Pharmaceutics, Physical Pharmaceutics, Prescription Analysis I/II and Pharmaceutics Practicals I/II/III to produce pharmacists who can contribute to patient care. We are conducting research on pharmaceutical technology including "pharmaceutical research on Mohs' paste," "designing nanoparticle drug delivery systems" and "studying drug micronization by biphasic methods," thus producing pharmacists who can engage in formulation design.

Pathogens are a major cause of diarrhea in children in developing countries. There are very few reported cases of death due to diarrhea in Japan, where hygiene is good and healthcare standards are high. However, globally, millions of children under the age of five die every year from bacterial diarrhea. Effective treatments to overcome this situation are urgently needed. Aeromonas sobria and Aeromonas hydrophila are attracting attention as bacteria that cause diarrhea in international travelers. The hemolytic toxins produced by these bacteria cause diarrhea and destroy red blood cells. We are purifying the hemolytic toxins produced by Aeromonas bacteria and investigating the mechanism of diarrhea induced by them. In addition, it has been reported that the white blood cell count decreases sharply in peripheral blood of leukemia patients who have developed resistance to anti-leukemia agents, when infected by Aeromonas bacteria, thereby leading to remission. Since hemolytic toxins may play a role in the reduction of white blood cell count, we are investigating the underlying mechanisms.


In recent years, many cases of death by stroke and heart attack due to thrombus have been reported. A thrombus is a blood clot, which forms after blood hardens for some reason within a blood vessel. Preventing thrombus formation reduces the number of deaths by stroke and heart attack; one approach is suppressing platelet function. Using rabbit platelets, we are exploring novel plant-derived substances that can suppress platelet aggregation. The structures of numerous substances contained in plants have been identified, but many of their pharmacological effects have not been investigated and remain unknown.

Pathologic physiology is a discipline that investigates the mechanisms of abnormalities of physiological functions that occur during a disease state. It is an interface between basic medicine and clinical medicine.


Knowledge of the pathologic physiology of each disease is essential to understand the theory of medication for those diseases, and pharmacists must acquire basic knowledge such as the relationship between each disease and biological functions, causes, pathogenesis, diagnostic criteria, symptoms (pathophysiological changes) and test methods. As well as teaching clinical pharmacy related to these requirements, our laboratory is conducting research which includes "understanding the aging mechanisms and development of treatments for age-related diseases," "development of analytical methods for psychotropic drugs in biological samples" in the field of addiction medicine, and "research on pathological analysis" from basic and clinical pharmacy.


We aim to produce outstanding human resources in clinical practice through education and research on medical pharmacy for students in the six-year pharmacy program.

Understanding the body's response to disease and the mechanism of action of medicines

Pharmacology has greatly advanced in line with related areas of science. Today, this field learns how medicines work as chemical substances by understanding the structural organization of the body, from the system and organs to cells and molecules.

Pharmaceutics that meet the needs of clinical practice

Today's pharmacists are required to play a wide range of roles such as interacting with each patient in a well-rounded manner and effectively delivering medications using various knowledge and skills. The Pharmaceutics Laboratory provides multidisciplinary education spanning from basic pharmacy fields to clinical and social pharmacy, through modules including Pharmaceutical Technology, Physical Pharmaceutics, Pharmaceutical Affairs Regulations, Pharmaceutics Practicals I/II/III and pre- and post-practical training. We strive to produce pharmacists who can provide the best rational and scientific medical care for patients.


We are also conducting clinical research on issues in hospitals and pharmacies by introducing various methodologies, aiming to produce pharmacists who can play an active role in clinical practice.

Technology to manipulate DNA, the substance that transmits genetic information, is now rapidly advancing, and it is anticipated that vital phenomena will be analyzed at the molecular level and applied to healthcare and drug discovery in the near future. This is a field of study that involves gene expression and protein biosynthesis using this new technology.

Today, as life expectancy increases, it is important to maintain a high quality of life for elderly people. By utilizing state-of-the-art reactors such as flow reactors and automated synthesis platforms, the Laboratory of Medicinal Chemistry is designing and synthesizing candidate compounds for new drugs. Our main research topics include the development of a helix mimetic library to explore protein-protein interaction inhibitors and the development of synthetic methods using flow reactors. We are participating in the "2015 Drug Discovery Infrastructure Promotion Research Project (third open call)" and "2017 Drug Discovery Infrastructure Promotion Research Project (first open call)," the program of the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED). We are also collaborating with Distinguished Emeritus Professor Satoshi Omura at Kitasato University, a Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine, to develop a natural product library.

Human beings have utilized compounds produced by animals, plants and microorganisms to treat disease and injury and to improve their health. However, many organic compounds with strong pharmacological activity are not used as medicines because of the limited ability to isolate them from natural sources. Developing methods for effectively synthesizing rare natural organic compounds and creating highly active and low-toxicity labeled compounds by structural modification are very important areas in drug discovery research. This research is further combined with other research fields such as molecular biology, biosynthesis and computational chemistry. This chemical biology has become a global trend.

Pharmacokinetics is a discipline that clarifies the mechanisms of action, toxicity and kinetics of drugs by thoroughly investigating their absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion. Our laboratory is conducting research on the mechanisms of drug metabolism and enzymes involved in metabolism, microdose clinical trials, treatment of pancreatic cancer by inhibiting lipid synthesis, induction of apoptosis of cancer cells by ultrasound and sonochemical activation of nanocompounds by ultrasound. In recent years, we have published research in international journals showing that fullerenes and various porphyrins enhance the induction of apoptosis of cancer cells by ultrasound.

When a drug is taken, it enters the digestive tract, where the dissolved drug is absorbed into the blood stream through the membrane of the digestive tract. Then, part of the drug is converted to other forms mainly in the liver, and the remainder reaches the target site through the blood to cure the disease. At the target site, it acts on receptors, enzymes, bacteria invading from outside or neoplasms generated by genetic alterations, and ultimately the drug works, which means that it shows a "medicinal effect." Recently, it has become possible to formulate this series of events mathematically. In other words, we can now predict the medicinal effects using mathematical formulas. Furthermore, the prediction gives a range of variations and probabilities rather than a single value. The Laboratory of Clinical Analysis is conducting research to test quantitative changes in drugs and the degree of response in vitro, in vivo and in silico. Where there are medicines, there are roles waiting for those who learn pharmacy. Why not study at the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences to learn more about medicines?

In addition to pharmaceuticals, you will learn how to explore and understand the beneficial and adverse effects of food and natural products that affect the physiological functions of the human body, using methods applied in basic and clinical medicine as well as information science. You will also learn predictive medicine to prevent diseases, such as genetics, and health sciences related to absorption, metabolism distribution and excretion in the body to improve QOL. Additionally, you will acquire knowledge regarding differences between normal and disease states and also obtain basic knowledge required for postgraduate study (e.g. Master of Medicine and Master of Pharmacy) and jobs in the healthcare industry.