Cancer patients suffer from physical pain due to cancer itself and side effects by anticancer drugs, as well as social pain such as employment problems, psychological and spiritual pain. It is important to overcome these total pains with multidisciplinary medical care. Regarding drug treatment, if there is no drug effective in alleviating the patients' symptoms, it is necessary to develop a novel drug or drug repositioning to apply existing drugs. Among them, "Japanese herbal kampo medicine", introduced from China and developed in Japan, has come to occupy an important position as a complementary and alternative medicine to Western drugs.

Japanese kampo medicine, so-called as personalized medicine according to the insight into each patient's "sho (clinical phenomena) ", has now been prescribed based on scientific grounds in recent years. We would like to introduce the status of kampo medicine as one of the supportive care in multidisciplinary cancer treatments, along with the importance of choice of prescribing of kampo medicine based on scientific evidence.

Purpose: This review aims to introduce the previous autologous invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cell-targeted cancer immunotherapy and an ongoing clinical trial using allogeneic induced pluripotent stem cell-derived NKT cells (iPS-NKT cells) for head and neck cancer (HNC).

Study selection: Combination therapies of adoptive immunotherapy using ex vivo activated iNKT cells derived from cancer-bearing patients and active immunotherapy using ligand-pulsed antigen presenting cells (APCs) are summarized. Since the preparation of functionally sufficient iNKT cells taken from advanced cancer patients was difficult, a robust protocol to generate iNKT cells in vitro via iPS cells was established. Investigator-initiated clinical trials of iPS-NKT cells were also conducted.

Results: The combination therapy with α-GalCer-pulsed APCs and adoptive transfer of autologous iNKT cells showed an objective clinical response. An establishment of in vitro generation of iNKT cells from iPS cells allowed us to ensure sufficient expansion of iNKT cells. Based on the preclinical examinations, a phase I study of allogenic iPS-NKT cell monotherapy for advanced or recurrent HNC patients started to test the feasibility and safety of intra-arterial injection of iPS-NKT cells.

Conclusions: The clinical study of allogenic iNKT cells is under evaluation. Once the safety profiles of iPS-NKT cell monotherapy are confirmed, we further plan to conduct a combination therapy with iPS-NKT cells plus αGalCer-pulsed APCs. Restimulated iPS-NKT cells are expected to exert potent adjuvant effects and improve anti-tumor responses.

Adverse skin reactions to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines have been rare. Because eppikajutsuto (EPTJ), which can alleviate inflammatory swelling, has heat^{Traditional Medicine module 1 (TM1)}-clearing and fluid^TM1-regulating potentials, we used it in a case of adverse skin reactions to COVID-19 vaccine. A 35-year-old woman received the second COVID-19 vaccine and presented with hacking, headache, and red glow on the face soon after receiving the vaccine. Symptoms such as flushing and wheal on the upper body improved after treatment with EPTJ. EPTJ can be used to alleviate the symptoms of adverse skin reactions to COVID-19 vaccines.

There are various types of airway stents for central airway stenosis (CAS) due to lung cancer. The placement of an airway stent is known to improve the patients' quality of life (QOL) and activities of daily living (ADL). Thus, we report 4 lung cancer cases with CAS managed with an Ultraflex stent, a type of airway stent, in which 3 patients showed improvement in performance status (PS) and could be discharged home. Since evidence for airway stenting is scarce, we reported and discussed the respective cases.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are two major causes of dementia. These diseases are both progressive neurodegenerative diseases whereas no curative treatment has not yet been established. Regenerative approaches have been extensively researched for AD and FTD, but they are still in early phase of pre-clinical trials. We show here, for the first time, that cytokines such as hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), granulocyte colony stimulating factor (GCSF), insulin-like growth factors (IGFs), and progranulin (PGRN) can induce the neurogenesis of GABAergic and glutamatergic neurons in cerebral cortex and hippocampi of AD and FTD patients. We also showed the evidence, for the first time, that the atrophied hippocampi were significantly regenerated by cytokine-induced neurogenesis in AD and FTD patients, which was confirmed by MRI study and neurophysiological evaluations. We therefore explored the potentiality of cytokine cocktail treatment for AD and FTD and showed that cytokine-induced neurogenesis is a novel promising strategy to cure AD and FTD.

Cell-based regenerative medicine entails culturing an abundance of cells outside of the body and then transfusing or injecting live cells back into the body. Our cancer immunotherapy uses multivalent Dendritic Cell (DC) vaccines and activated Natural Killer (NK) cells to increase the immune response against cancerous cells.

In our protocol, live cellular treatments are given to patients subcutaneously or intravenously every two weeks as soon as the cells are cultured for optimal results. However, patient health complications or concurrent treatment schedules can cause a delay in the treatment schedule. In these circumstances, the cellular treatment is cryopreserved.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns and travel restrictions have necessitated patient delays in getting care and as a result, the long-term cryopreservation of cells are needed. Due to concerns of cellular degradation and safety, we have limited the use of cellular treatments that have been cryopreserved for over one year. To address whether this safety precaution is warranted, we examined the viability of cells that have undergone prolonged cryopreservation. Our results show that DC vaccines and NK immune cells that had been preserved for over two years maintained high cell number and viability rates post-thaw. Our findings suggest that long-term cryopreserved DC and NK cells may be safely applied for clinical applications following further investigations on cell viability, quality and establishing biosafety profiles.