CV Science

Akira TAJIMA-GOTO PhD. at Nagoya University in Japan

Course and current status

• February 26th, 2015 - HDR (Uviversity of Strasbourg): Title: Functional dissection of the IMD/TNF-R pathway in Drosophila melanogaster.

• October, 2012 - Present (INSERM CR1 permanent researcher): Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IBMC), UPR 9022, CNRS (France)

• April, 2011 - September, 2012 (Postdoctoral fellow): Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IBMC), UPR 9022, CNRS (France)

• April, 2009 - March, 2011 (GCOE assistant professor): Graduate School of Life Sciences, GCOE, Tohoku University (Japan)

• November, 2008 - March, 2009 (GCOE postdoctoral fellow): Graduate School of Life Sciences, GCOE, Tohoku University (Japan)

• July, 2006 - October, 2008 (Postdoctral fellow): Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University (Japan)

• July, 2005 - June, 2006 (Postdoctral fellow): Research Center for Allergy and Immunology (RCAI), RIKEN (Japan)

• April, 2004 - June, 2005 (JSPS young research fellow): Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IBMC), UPR 9022, CNRS (France)

• October, 2003 - March, 2004 (EGIDE French embassy fellow): Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IBMC), UPR 9022, CNRS (France)

• April, 2002 - September, 2003 (Postdoctral fellow): Institut de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IBMC), UPR 9022, CNRS (France)

• January, 2002 - March, 2002 (Postdoctoral fellow): Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences, Nagoya University (Japan)

Scientific summary

New developments on the Drosophila IMD pathway in the context of viral infections and tumorigenesis.

The host defense of the model organism Drosophila is under the control of two distinct signaling cascades, the Toll and the Imd pathways. The latter shares extensive similarities with the mammalian TNF-R pathway and was initially discovered for its role in anti-Gram-negative bacterial reactions. Increasing evidence from the host laboratory and other groups now indicate that the Imd/TNF-R pathway has more diverse functions, namely in antiviral defenses, and also in inflammatory-like reactions in flies. My first objective is to analyze the precise role of the IMD/TNF-R pathway genes in antiviral defenses. Two strategies namely (1) target-focused approach, which directly examine the role of the components of the IMD/TNF-R pathway and (2) discovery-based approach, which is based on the function of novel interacting partners of the IMD/TNF-R pathway (Fukuyama et al., 2013) already gave us a number of promising candidate genes. Secondly, because of the connection of inflammatory-like reactions, I also developed a new project investigating the impact of innate immune responses against tumors. We already established the tumor-model system, systematically examine the contribution of innate immune signaling pathways and start having promising results. In the long term, I plan to extend my research to the functional characterization of these proteins in innate immune defenses of flies and also in mice.