Segawa Lab

About us

Full Devotion to Science, Friendly Atmosphere, and Continuous Excitement

Although the discovery of DNA has significantly advanced our understanding of life, we still do not fully understand even a single "cell," the basic unit of multicellular organisms. What is life? It is very mysterious. "Full Devotion to Science, Friendly Atmosphere, and Continuous Excitement" – This policy comes from my mentor. We inherit this legacy and aim to understand cells and, beyond that, to understand life and disease using biochemistry and molecular genetics.

瀬川　勝盛
Katsumori SEGAWA
東京科学大学　総合研究院　難治疾患研究所　医化学分野

News

24 Apr, 2026: Congratulations to Miyata-san for being awarded the 創発: FOREST Grant!!; He will be working on the orphan SLC transporter family and their physiology.
1 Apr, 2026: We’re pleased to announce that Tong-kun and Koizumi-san have enrolled in the IST Graduate School.; Please also welcome Senda-kun (Kitasato U) and Takagi-san (Technical staff), who have just joined our lab team!
26 Mar, 2026: Nishimura-san and Xu-san completed their Master's degrees at the Institute of Science Tokyo, and Xu-san will enroll in a Ph.D. program.; Shinoda-san and Hachisu-kun also completed their M.D. degrees and will work as resident doctors in clinical hospitals.; Big congrats!
10-12 Dec, 2025: Masa was awarded the Best Presentation Award in the 54th Annual Meeting of the Japanease Society for Immunology @Himeji; Congrats!
19-20 June, 2025: Masa was awarded the Best Presentation Prize in the 2nd Annual meeting of Japanease Cytokine Society @Osaka; Congrats!
7 May, 2025: Ohsumi-sensei, a Nobel laureate, dropped by our lab, discussed our recent work, and encouraged team members!!; Great opportunity to all team members!
Apr, 2025: Riko Koizumi-san (Kitasato U) and Wu Tong-kun (Chuo U) join our team!
1 Apr, 2025: Masa has been appointed as a lecturer in Medical Research Laboratory. Congrats!
27 Mar, 2025: On the final day with Nishimoto-san @ Science Tokyo, we held a lunch party.; She had provided substantial support for the animal work in our team, making a significant contribution.; She will be joining Tohara-sensei's Lab at U Tokyo. Best of luck to her!
17 Mar, 2025: A collaborative work has been posted @biorxiv.; "Early-peaking caspase-7 activity at the plasma membrane drives apoptotic phosphatidylserine exposure”; Congratulations to Taira-san and Shinoda-san from Miura-sensei's Lab on this exciting discovery!
11 Mar, 2025: Yugo and Chery-san joined an annual meeting of Medical Reseach Laboratory.; Yugo has been awarded the best paper prize in 2024 @MRL. Congrtas!
11 Mar, 2025: Our TMEM63/OSCA work @FEBS Letters has been featured as an Editor's choice and the cover image of the issue.; Congrats Yugo and team!.
Feb, 2025: Masa Nagata has been awarded for SECOM Science and Technology Foundation Grant.; Congrats Masa!.
20-21 Jan, 2025: We joined annual cell death colloquium @Kyoto U.; Yugo gave a talk about membrane structure-responsive lipid scramblase TMEM63B.
3 Dec, 2024: A paper regarding TMEM63/OSCA protein family members is accepted @ FEBS Letters.; We addressed the evolutionary aspects of TMEM63/OSCA family members regarding membrane structure-sensitive phospholipid scramblase activity.; It's scramblase activity is conserved in vertebrates but not in plant OSCA1.1, indicating evolutionary adaptation.; Congrats! Yugo and team!
22 Nov, 2024: We hosted the 654th MRI Seminar and had Dr. Katsuhiko Hayashi from Osaka.; He shared recent work on reconstitution of germ cell development and also sex conversion in vitro. Mind blowing!; He is the 100 Most Influential People of 2024 in TIME journal.; The lecture taught us that great success is built on ordinary experiments conducted in a step-by-step manner.; We need grit!
15 Nov, 2024: We hosted the 3rd Medical Chemistry Seminar and had Dr. Yasutaka Okabe from Osaka.; He shared recent work on mucosiliarly clearance system in airway host defence. Great talk!
12 Nov, 2024: The 14th IFReC international symposium on immunology.
1 Nov, 2024: Yugo Miyata has been promoted to Lecturer.; Congrats, Yugo!
30 Oct, 2024: Press Release is out!
Oct, 2024: TMEM63B paper is featured in a Research Briefing @Nat Struct Mol Biol.
Oct, 2024: TMEM63B paper by Yugo Miyata et al. is finally out @Nat Struct Mol Biol. Congrats, Yugo!; We identified TMEM63B as a membrane structure-responsive lipid scramblase to control plasma membrane lipid distribution.; Kastuya and Yongchan in Tomo Nishizawa's team @ YCU detemined its open and closed structures.; This article is featured in Research Briefing @Nat Struct Mol Biol.; Amazing collaborative work!
Sep, 2024: The last day as the TMDU. We are going to be a member of the Institute of Science Tokyo from Oct 2024.; Amazing team for 3 years.; Go for the next!
Sep, 2024: Our very recent study of identification of a new type of lipid scramblase to control plasma membrane lipid distribution was accepted and will be published soon!; This is an amazing collaborative study with Tomo Nishizawa team with Katsuya and Yongchan @YCU!!; Coming Soon!!
Sep, 2024: Yugo joined a meeting of Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A) @ Osaka.; He was awarded for Best Presentation.; Congrats!
Sep, 2024: Dr. Masahiro Nagata have joined our team as an assisstant peofessor.; He have been worked on fields of innate immunity and cell death, and will have a project for innate immunity using a genome-wide screen in our lab.; Go for it!
July, 2024: Yusui Ishii and Yu Karibe, TMDU Med School students, have joined our team!; Enjoy your science in our Lab!
12Apr, 2024: Kats had a senimar @Juntendo U.
1Apr, 2024: Futaba Imahayashi-san and Momoka Uehara-san, TMDU Med School students, have joined our team!
21Mar, 2024: Nishimura-san, Shiraki-san, and Nagat-san have graduated from Kitasato U! Congrats!; We had a farewell party for Yu Shiraki-san. She did good jobs on a novel lipid scramblase, and will join @Dr. Takuya Matsuo Lab in Kitasato U.; Good luck!
5-6 Oct, 2023: We had the 18th International Symposium of the Institute Network for Biomedical Sciences @MRI TMDU.; We had Dr. Shigekazu Nagata from Osaka U, Dr. Yasunori Saheki from Nanyang Tech U in Singapore, and Dr. Nick Barker from A*STAR in Singapore as keynote speakers.
1 Oct, 2023: Ayodya de Alwis from Sri Lanka has joined our team as a MEXT scholarship grad school student.; Welcome, Ayodya-san!
3 Aug, 2023: We had the 1st MedChem seminar @TMDU.; The guest speaker was Dr. Feng Shao from Beijing.; Title: Activation of antitumor immunity by bacteria-derived signals: Pyroptosis and Beyond; The seminar was actually fantastic! And, your advice encouraged us very much! Thanks, Feng!
15 Jul, 2023: We joined the 31st Japan Cell Death Meeting @Juntendo U and TMDU.; Great talks from many colleagues in Japan, and the keynote lectures was given by Dr. Feng Shao who identified intracellular LPS receptors and Gasdermins.; It was actually amazing! Thanks Dr. Feng!
13 Jul, 2023: We had a seminar by Dr. Masahiro Nagata from University of Cologne in Germany.; He has worked and focused on pore-forming proteins in caspase-8 mediated cell death and inflammation in Dr. Manolis Pasparakis Lab. Thanks, Masa!
1 Apr, 2023: New team members from Kitasato U have joined our team. Yu Shiraki, Megumi Nishimura, and Aya Nagata. Welcome!; 北里大学から3名の卒業研究生がteamに加わりました。