Section Chief

Yuko Seko, MD, PhD

Current member

Yuko Seko (Section Chief)

Dilip Rai (Research fellow)

Yuka Endo (Visiting researcher)

Natsuko Nogami  (Technical Staff)

Our Research

Our perception of surrounding predominantly relies on vision. Persons with vision impairment have difficulties in daily life, school or work. In our laboratory, we are engaged in research on strategies to prevent deterioration of visual functions by incurable eye diseases. Research on helping people with visual disabilities to improve visual functioning or psychosocial functioning in daily life, has been performed in collaboration with Hospital, National Rehabilitation Center with Persons with Disabilities (NRCD).

We have been focusing on retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which causes progressive degeneration of the retina and is one of leading causes of vision impairment and blindness in Japan. In order to make progression of degeneration limited, development of diagnosis and inhibitory treatment are promising. Since 2002, we had performed screening for known disease-causing genes of RP in collaboration with Hospital, NRCD. As a result, major pathogenic variants of the EYS gene for autosomal recessive RP in Japan were discovered. Additionally, we are engaged in development of direct-reprogramming technique to differentiate retinal photoreceptor-like cells from somatic cells. We have been aiming for elucidation of pathogenesis of RP using disease-modeling in vitro (cellular model) and in vivo (zebrafish model). Our ultimate goal is to improve quality of life of persons with visual disabilities using the results of our research. 

Contact Information

Visual Functions Section,
Department of Rehabilitation for Sensory Functions, Research Institute,
National Rehabilitation Center for Persons with Disabilities
4-1, Namiki, Tokorozawa, Saitama 359-8555, JAPAN
Tel: +81-4-2995-3100   Fax: +81-4-2995-3132
E-mail: seko-yuko@rehab.go.jp