Bio
Kenya Honda received his M.D. from Kobe University and his PhD from Kyoto University. He has been Assistant Professor at the Universities of Tokyo and Osaka, and is now Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo and Team Leader of the Laboratory for Gut Homeostasis at RIKEN. He is also Scientific advisor for Vedanta Bioscience and 4Bio Capital, and an editor for a number of Journals. Prof. Honda has received a number of awards, including the NISTEP Award, the Gottfried Wagener Prize, the JSI award, the Inoue Prize for Science, the Academic Award of the Mochida Memorial Foundation, the Bäelz award, and the Carlos J. Finlay UNESCO Prize for Microbiology. From 2014 to 2021, he has been named by Clarivate Analytics in the list of “Highly Cited Researchers”. Prof. Honda’s lab research focuses on the gut microbiota-immune cells interactions in humans, rodents, and non-human primates, with the final aim of identifying bacterial species that influence the host immune cells to develop therapeutic interventions for a wide-array of intestinal dysibiosis, such as inflammatory bowel disease, auto-immune diseases, and allergy.

Abstract Trillions of microorganisms transit through and reside in the mammalian gastrointestinal tract each day, collectively producing thousands of small molecules and metabolites with local and systemic effects on host physiology. Identifying effector microorganisms that causally affect host phenotype and deciphering the underlying mechanisms have become foci of microbiome research and have begun to enable the development of microbiota-based therapeutics. Two complementary, reductionist approaches have commonly been used: the first starts with a specific phenotype (such as immune cell induction) and narrows down the microbiota to identify responsible effector bacteria, while the second starts with bacteria-derived molecules and metabolites and seeks to understand their effects on the human physiology. Together, these strategies provide the basis for the rational design of microbiota-targeted therapeutics to ameliorate specific diseases and conditions.