Yoshiki Sasai

Yoshiki Sasai (Japanese笹 井 芳 树, Yoshiki Sasai, born 1962 ) is a Japanese developmental biologist and physician. He is head of the group neurogenesis and organogenesis ( Sasai lab ) at the Center for Developmental Biology RIKEN in Kobe. Sasai is known for the development of organ - like tissue from stem cells.

Career

Sasai made ​​1986 his M.D. Degrees in medicine at the Medical School of the University of Kyoto. 1986 to 1988 he made a specialty training in General Medicine and Emergency Medicine. Then he turned to the basic research and was awarded his doctorate in 1993 at Shigetada Nakanishi at Kyoto University with a thesis on neuron-specific transcription factors of the HES family. As a post - graduate student, he was until 1996 at the UCLA School of Medicine at Eddy De Robertis. From 1996 he was assistant professor and in 1998 professor at the Medical School of the University of Kyoto.

He studied in his laboratory the molecular and cellular basis of the decisions in neuronal morphogenesis. He succeeded in the creation of artificial retinas in vitro, by letting himself not develop as usual in culture dishes, but free floating in fluids stem cells, where they spontaneously balls made ​​of approximately 3000 cells, with retina -like cells in the eye-shaped emergence vaults. His group is also working on stem cells, which are intended to provide for the treatment of Parkinson 's disease dopamine - producing cells, which is a result of dying of those cells.

He is the editorial board of Neuron, Development, Genesis and Developmental Dynamics.

Writings

• Eiraku M., Sasai et al Self -organized formation of polarized cortical tissues from ESCs and its active manipulation by extrinsic signal, Cell Stem Cell, Volume 3, 2008, pp. 519-532