Sasaki, Yusuke
Dr. Yusuke Sasaki completed his M.Sc. degree at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. In 2003, he joined Kowa Company, Ltd. where he began his career in drug screening and pharmacology research. He first joined CICS in 2010 to work on finding new therapeutic targets for metabolic diseases. He focused on the inflammatory adipokine Angptl2, and he headed a gastric bypass model study to identify potential beneficial signaling events that precede actual weight loss from the surgery.
After he returned to Japan in 2015, he entered a Ph.D. program at the Laboratory for Systems Biology and Medicine, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at The University of Tokyo. Mentored by Dr. Toshiya Tanaka and Dr. Tatsuhiko Kodama, he investigated the therapeutic potential of Pemafibrate (K-877), a novel PPAR alpha modulator, on a non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) model. He also studied the combination therapy of K-877 and Tofogliflozin (Sglt2 inhibitor) to improve NASH liver disease. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in 2019. Dr. Yusuke then rejoined CICS in December 2021 as not only its research administrator but also as its director of the Metabolic Disease Group; the same group in which he was a member from 2010-2015. Dr. Sasaki leads his team to develop novel therapeutic approaches to treat metabolic diseases.