Bio
My long-term goal as a physician-scientist is to develop therapeutic strategies for right heart failure by elucidating its pathophysiology.
I graduated from Kyushu University, School of Medicine in Fukuoka, Japan in 2008. Following a residency program at Aso Iizuka Hospital, I finished fellowship in Emergency Medicine (1 year) and Cardiovascular Medicine (2 years). My clinical expertise is general cardiology, cardiac catheterization, echocardiography, and cardiac critical care.
After my clinical training, I started my research career working towards a Ph.D. under the mentorship of Dr. Kensuke Egashira. During my Ph.D., I published two papers focusing on the development of novel therapeutics for acute myocardial infarction and pulmonary arterial hypertension. Through this research experience, I developed skills in modeling and assessing cardiovascular disease in both small (rodents) and large animals (pigs)
In 2017, I was appointed as an Assistant Professor and attending physician in the Department of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine at Kyushu University Hospital. During this period, I learned that right heart failure was one of the most devastating conditions with no treatment options in patients with pulmonary hypertension, congenital heart disease, and patients on long-term mechanical ventricular assist devices. I also continued my research with a research grant funded by the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science.
In 2019, I decided to further expand my research field into right heart failure and joined Dr. Edda Spiekerkoetter’s lab at Stanford University as a postdoctoral fellow. I am currently focusing on the role of BMPR2 in the cardiomyocytes, the structural changes in the right ventricle under pressure overload, and the development of right ventricle-targeting therapy in pulmonary hypertension.
