Warren Fellowship awarded to Dr Masato Fujiyoshi

IHPBA and the Kenneth Warren Foundation are delighted to announce that the IHPBA Kenneth Warren Fellowship for 2015/16 has been awarded to Dr Masato Fujiyoshi of the Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan.

Dr Fujiyoshi is a board-certificated surgeon of Japan Surgical Society and a researcher of machine perfusion preservation in liver transplantation. In 2003, he graduated from Hokkaido University School of Medicine and acquired a Japanese medical license. He then worked his residency at Hokkaido University Hospital under Professor Satoru Todo. Since his surgical fellowship in 2009, he has conducted PhD research at Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine under Professor Satoru Todo and Akinobu Taketomi.

Dr Fujiyoshi's  thesis was about machine perfusion preservation and pre-transplant graft therapy in liver transplantation.  He developed a mouse model of liver transplantation following machine perfusion preservation and achieved sub-normothermic acellular oxygenated machine perfusion after many trials and errors.  Machine perfusion provides continuous supply of oxygen and metabolic substances and removal of toxic metabolites.  These functions of machine perfusion permit non-hypothermic organ preservation maintaining particular levels of metabolic activities in the grafts.  Non-hypothermic machine perfusion is expected to develop into not only a protective organ preservation method but also a pre-transplant graft assessment method.  He believes that the mouse model of liver transplantation following sub-normothermic oxygenated machine perfusion will contribute to expansion of the donor pool.  He also developed a pre-transplant graft therapy using siRNA in a mouse liver transplantation model. RNA interference is a promising gene silencing technology for clinical application and ischemia / reperfusion injury in which transient harmful gene expression plays an important role would be its good therapeutic target.  He will be awarded his PhD in September 2015.

Thanks to the Warren Foundation, Dr Fujiyoshi plans to continue his research in the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands under host mentor, Professor Robert J. Porte.  He would like to conduct basic research on advanced applications of the machine perfusion method and take part in clinical studies of machine perfusion preservation in DCD liver transplantation.  He first met Professor Porte at the AASLD Liver Meeting 2014 in Boston and was so impressed by his presentation about machine perfusion and that he requested a place on his team.

Dr Fujiyoshi's medical background:

LICENSURE

• 2003     Japanese Medical License

CERTIFICATION

• 2009     Board certificated surgeon of Japan Surgical Society

EDUCATION

• Apr.2009-Sep.2015        Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine (Ph.D.)
• Apr.1997-Mar.2003        Hokkaido University School of Medicine (M.D.)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Apr. 2008-Mar. 2009      Hokkaido University Hospital, Sapporo, Japan
• Oct. 2007-Mar. 2008      JCHO Hokkaido Hospital, Sapporo, Japan
• Apr. 2007-Sep. 2007      Bibai City Hospital, Bibai, Japan
• Apr. 2006-Mar. 2007      KKR Sapporo Medical Center, Sapporo, Japan
• Apr. 2005-Mar. 2006      Asahikawa-Kosei General Hospital, Asahikawa, Japan
• Apr. 2004-Mar. 2005      Sapporo City General Hospital, Sapporo, Japan
• Apr. 2003-Mar. 2004      Hokkaido University Hospital, Sapporo, Japan

IHPBA would like to congratulate Dr Fujiyoshi on becoming the Warren Fellow for 2015/16 and looks forward to giving an update on his research in due course.

Published on Wednesday 1st July 2015