When humans age, they experience many diseases in which the immune system is excessively activated and attacks host healthy tissues. Furthermore, aged people tend to have poor vaccination responses. COVID-19 reminds us that aged people are threatened by inappropriate reactions of the immune system. Our lab designs new protein-based drugs that address the issues caused by cellular senescence.

We are keen to develop new cancer medicines with bioengineering methods. Cancer immunotherapy is a very promising approach that is used in the clinic. However, current therapies are not effective for every patient and are prone to toxicities. We are developing technologies that can deliver cancer drugs specifically to the tumor. Our targeted immunotherapy will improve safety and efficacy of current treatments. Our goal is to translate our technologies to the clinic. As an example, Ishihara founded a company, ArrowImmune Inc.

Regenerative medicine is a very promising field that is essential for treating injuries. However, very few treatments are currently available in the clinic due to undesirable side effects and lack of potency. We engineer proteins to induce efficient tissue restoration.