Katsunori Nonogaki
Dr. Nonogaki is a specialist of diabetes care and Internal medicine. He has obtained PhD in Endocrinology, Metabolism, and Diabetes. Then, he worked as a Postdoc Research Fellow at the University of California,
San Francisco and the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla. During this period, his research has mainly focused on “the role of the central nervous system in the regulation of hepatic glucose production”,
“cytokines and lipid metabolism”, and “ brain serotonin systems and energy homeostasis”. He found the novel evidence in the dissociated pathways of serotonin 5-HT2C receptor and leptin
in the central regulation of appetite and obesity, and proposed a novel physiological theory of “central dissociated regulation of feeding and autonomic neural circuits”. Lorcaserin (Belviq), a selective
5-HT2C receptor agonist, which is used for the treatment of obesity, is based on the original research works by Dr. Nonogaki et al. Current studies are to determine the physiological mechanisms and potential
treatment for obesity, diabetes and their complications. Dr. Nonogaki is also developing novel medical devices for hypertension and diabetes.
Research Interests: Serotonin network, GLP-1 network, feeding regulation, hepatic glucose and lipid metabolism, and medical device in the treatment of diabetes and hypertension.
Professor Akira Sugawara belongs to the Department of Molecular Endocrinology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan. He
graduated from Tohoku University School of Medicine on 1987 (M.D.) and got Ph.D. on 1991 from Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine. He performed Postdoctoral Fellowship in William Chin’s laboratory at the
Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston from 1991 to 1994. His major is general internal medicine, endocrinology and metabolism and hypertension and nephrology. His research interest is 1) molecular biology
of nuclear hormone receptors, 2) etiology of high blood pressure, 3) pathophysiology of diabetic nephropathy, 4) gene regulation of aldosterone synthase, and 5) epigenetics of hypertension and diabetes mellitus.
