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Mentor: Dr. Elena Aikawa

Dr. Shinsuke Ito studied molecular biology, biochemistry and cell biology as well as researched the regulation of cytoskeletal dynamics and functions of cell adhesion molecules at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry with Professor Yoshimi Takai at the Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University. After graduation, he began working on drug discovery at Tokyo New Drug Research Laboratories, Kowa Company, Ltd. Specifically, he investigated hypertriglyceridemia and renal disease. He then had the opportunity to be a mentee of Professor Takashi Kadowaki in the Department of Metabolic Diseases, Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo. There he explored the functions of insulin receptor substrates 1 and 2 (IRS1, IRS2) in hepatic insulin signaling during fasting and feeding states, using wild type, and liver-specific IRS1 and IRS2 single and double knockout mice. Following these studies, he returned Kowa and worked on multiple projects relating to cardiometabolic diseases including type 2 diabetes. In 2014 he moved to Boston to work with Professor Elena Aikawa at CICS. He led an investigation on how sortilin (SORT1) mediates vascular calcification and published his mechanism in the J Biol Chem. In 2018 Dr. Ito returned to Kowa and continued his work in calcification by designing high-throughput anti-calcifying compound screens. In 2021, Dr. Ito took the opportunity to return to CICS and rejoined the center in early 2022. Currently, he is taking the lead on some of the most advanced projects on treating calcification.

Keywords

  • Calcification
  • Aortic Stenosis
  • Sortilin
  • Biochemistry
  • Molecular Biology
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