Overview

About Itch

Itch (or pruritus) is defined as an unpleasant sensation with the urge to scratch, which is believed to be a biological self-defense reaction to external assault or a physiological warning of abnormality inside the body. Moreover, continuous itch stimuli could modify the itch sensation, leading to treatment resistance and chronicity. Itch resistance to antihistamines, which are traditional antipruritic medicines, is an example of intractable itch.

Intractable itch causes sleep disturbance and psychological stress (depression, anxiety, and even suicidal feelings), which lead to poor performance in school or at work and reduce the quality of life (QOL). Such reduction of QOL diminishes motivation to pursue an industrious life and social activities, affecting socioeconomic activity.

In Europe and the USA, based on this background, several itch research centers were established and began to focus on revealing the mechanism of intractable itch, aiming for its prevention and treatment.

About The Institute for Environmental and Gender-Specific Medicine

The Institute for Environmental and Gender-Specific Medicine, Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine (the founding director; CEO Hideoki Ogawa, M.D., Ph.D.), was founded in 2002, supported by a grant of High-Tech Research Center Project for Private Universities: matching fund subsidy from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan.

Currently, Prof. Kenji Takamori (M.D., Ph.D.), a director of Institute for Environmental and Gender Specific Medicine in Juntendo University, has been working on the themes, 1) elucidation of pathogenic mechanisms of allergic diseases, autoimmune diseases and cancer, in which environmental and genetic factors are intricately intertwined, and 2) improvement of QOL in patients with those diseases.

Since 2013, Prof. Takamori and collaborators have been focusing on intractable itch helped by Strategic Research Foundation Grant-aided Project for Private Universities from MEXT (Grant number S1311011). So far, we have discovered some neural cells or mediators involved in the pathogenic process of diseases with intractable itch, which should be targets for therapeutic strategies.

About Juntendo Itch Research Center (JIRC)

To promote continued research in this field beyond the above-mentioned support, we established Juntendo Itch Research Center (JIRC) on the 1st of August, 2019, which is a center associated with Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine, Institute for Environmental and Gender-Specific Medicine.

In this research center, building on the basis of our previous findings, we are aiming to elucidate the molecular and cellular basis of intractable itch and develop medical care including an evaluation system, while supporting young researchers and graduate students in both basic science and clinical fields. This project expects to establish a framework of translational research to develop new treatments for intractable itch, improving QOL and socioeconomic activity.