Dr. Atsuo Sasaki
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Cancer Biology
University of Cincinnati, OH, USA
Title : “Discovery of GTP-Energy Sensor that Regulates Metabolism and Tumorigenesis"
Feb 18th 2016, 2 PM EST/1 PM CST/ 11 AM PST/ 7PM GMT/ 00.30 AM Feb 19th IST
Atsuo Sasaki graduated from the Tokyo University of Science in 1995. He then entered the master course in the graduate school of Hiroshima University to study plant nitrogen metabolism by generating transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana and received a M.S. degree in 1997. For Ph.D. course research, he joined to Dr. Akihiko Yoshimura's lab at Kurume Medical School and received a Ph.D. in 2001. While a graduate student, he studied the regulation of cytokine signaling by SOCS (Suppressor of Cytokine Signaling) family proteins, and subsequently investigated the regulation of Ras/MAPK growth factor signaling by Sprouty and SPRED.
In 2002, Dr. Sasaki joined to Richard Firtel’s laboratory in University of California, San Diego where he learned live imaging technology and utilized Dictyostelium, a powerful model system for chemotaxis. His research has revealed how Ras regulates PI 3-Kinase and the actin network during cell migration.
In 2005, Dr. Sasaki then joined Lewis Cantley’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School, where he continued to investigate post-translational regulation of K-Ras, one of the most frequently mutated oncogenes. He has focused on using mass spectrometry to identify post-translational modifications of Ras that control function.
He began investigating the role of GTP metabolism on Cancer and Metabolic diseases and joined the University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine as a tenure-track assistant professor in the summer of 2012.
Outside of the lab, Dr. Sasaki pushes himself to keep up with his children, Moeto and Marino.
