Tissue Stem Cells and Uterine Physiology and Pathology

Serdar E. Bulun, MD

Dr. Tetsuo Maruyama graduated from the School of Medicine at Keio University (Tokyo, Japan) in 1986. He obtained MD and PhD degrees in 1986 and in 1996, respectively, from Keio University. In addition to his clinical duties, he initiated his research work on the immunobiology of the uterus and the immunological aspects of recurrent pregnancy loss from 1989 to 1994. He has then undertaken research at the Institute for Virus Research, Kyoto University, Japan, on a project on the role of thioredoxin, a redox protein, and sarcoma (SRC) tyrosine kinase in decidualization of human endometrium. He also worked at the Laboratory of Molecular Growth Regulation at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, NIH, on molecular cloning and functional analysis of novel bromodomain protein BRD4. BRD4 has now become known as an epigenetic key player involved in a wide variety of physiological and pathological events. Indeed, inhibition of BRD4 has recently emerged as a therapeutic strategy for cancer drug discovery.

In 2000, Dr. Maruyama returned to the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Keio University School of Medicine and has served as a principal investigator to work on the role of histone acetylation and SRC in embryo implantation and endometrial physiology/pathophysiology.

His most recent research has focused on stem cells and regeneration in the female reproductive tract. His research group has for the first time identified, prospectively isolated, and characterized human endometrial and myometrial stem/progenitor-like cells using side population-based methods and very recently succeeded in a surface marker-based definition of myometrial stem/progenitor cells.

He and his colleagues have developed in vivo regeneration model of human endometrium and its bioluminescence imaging system. Using this model in combination with cell tracking they have established a novel in vivo endometrial stem cell assay in which multipotential differentiation can be identified to achieve a consensus definition of the endometrial stem cell.

Based on his scholarly achievements, he has provided a new paradigm on the role of stem cells in the physiology and pathology of the female reproductive tract. Very recently, he and his colleagues have successfully demonstrated the potential of uterine tissue bioengineering using decellularization and recellularization techniques to develop novel therapeutic strategies for uterine factor infertility.