We are pleased to announce that Dr. Reiko Shinkura from The University of Tokyo, Japan will join Second Conjoint RIKEN – ISM 2026 as a speaker and give a presentation entitled “Mouse IgA modulates human gut microbiota in patients with inflammatory bowel disease“.

Summary:

Dr. Reiko Shinkura, Professor at the Institute for Quantitative Biosciences at the University of Tokyo, will deliver the keynote presentation at the RIKEN-ISM Targeting Microbiota 2026, unveiling a bold new approach to treating gut dysbiosis: orally administered IgA antibodies that selectively reshape the gut microbiome.

Where conventional antibiotics destroy beneficial bacteria alongside pathogens, triggering recurrent disease, Dr. Shinkura’s mouse-derived multimeric IgA antibody takes a smarter path: it suppresses harmful bacteria while leaving beneficial species like lactic acid bacteria and butyrate producers intact. This preserves the gut’s natural colonization resistance rather than dismantling it.

Her team has demonstrated that oral IgA administration effectively restores microbiota balance in mice colonized with IBD patient-derived microbiota, not by targeting a single pathogen, but by regulating the entire microbial ecosystem. This whole-community approach positions IgA therapy as a potential therapeutic strategy, fundamentally distinct from current treatments like fecal microbiota transplantation or single-target antibiotics.

In this keynote, Dr. Shinkura will make the case for IgA antibody therapy as a transformative new class of microbiota medicine, one that could redefine how we treat inflammatory bowel disease and dysbiosis-driven conditions.