Advisory Board and Speakers

Advisory board

Dr Martin Gosling

Martin has devoted his research career to realising the therapeutic potential of ion channels in both industrial and academic settings.
Subsequent to completing a BSc degree in Pharmacology at the University of Leeds, Martin received his PhD from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Aston in Birmingham by studying ion channels in bone and muscle cells. His ion channel research continued throughout his post-doctoral studies at Imperial College and in 1998 Martin was appointed as lecturer in Vascular Physiology at Imperial College School of Medicine.
Martin joined Novartis in 2001 in the Respiratory Diseases Area based in Horsham UK, and established an industry leading ion channel discovery group focused upon programs for the treatment of respiratory, CNS, inflammatory and cardiovascular diseases. Martin and his associated teams made pivotal contributions to the identification of numerous clinical candidates, several of which are still progressing through clinical development.
In 2014 Martin joined the University of Sussex, establishing a group developing respiratory therapeutics programs and collaborating with colleagues in CNS ion channel drug discovery. Martin is also a founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Enterprise Therapeutics, a Sussex-based respiratory biotech company.

Dr Derek Bowie

Dr. Derek Bowie is the Director of the FRQS-funded research group, GEPROM, and has been a Professor at McGill University since 2002. He is the recipient of the Canada Research Chair award in Receptor Pharmacology and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Physiology, Current Neuropharmacology and Channels. Dr. Bowie earned his Ph.D. at the University of London after completing his undergraduate degree at Strathclyde University in Scotland. He then carried out postdoctoral training in France (Université Louis Pasteur), Switzerland (University of Zurich) and the USA (National Institutes of Health) before holding a faculty position at Emory University in Atlanta. The Bowie lab focuses on the structure-function properties of ionotropic glutamate receptors, GABA-A receptors and sodium channels as well as examining their role in neuronal circuit behaviour

Professor Mustafa Djamgoz

Mustafa Djamgoz is a graduate of Imperial College London (first-class BSc degree in Physics and a PhD in Biophysics). He became Professor of Neurobiology in 1995, and later (2005), Professor of Cancer Biology. He worked on the electrophysiology and synaptic plasticity of the retina for more than 20 years before becoming interested in the pathophysiology of cancer! With his highly unusual scientific background in neuroscience, he has introduced novel techniques aiming at early diagnosis and non-toxic therapy of solid cancers. This work – neuroscience solutions to cancer – has led to a new vision of the metastatic process. His approach is ‘integrated’ and a new drug has reached a pre-clinical stage. He has also formed a small company (INAP Oncology Ltd). Professor Djamgoz has published 5 books, more than 200 primary research papers and has trained more than 30 PhDs. His book aimed at the public, called “BEAT CANCER in Ten Steps” (co-authored with Professor Jane Plant) was published in June, 2014. His scientific consultancies and granting agencies include the Medical Research Council (UK), The Wellcome Trust, Breast Cancer Campaign, Prostate Cancer Charity and Prostate UK. Prof Djamgoz is the recipient of the Huxley Memorial Medal, Japanese Government Research Award for Foreign Specialist and the Freedom of the City of London. Scientific charity work and public understanding are big parts of his life. In 2002 he established the Pro Cancer Research Fund and in 2005 he was appointed a Trustee of Breast Cancer care. He has also served as the Chairman of the Science Council of the College of Medicine.

Dr Howard Baylis

Howard obtained his BSc from the University of Leicester and his PhD at the John Innes Institute in Norwich. After periods as a post-doc in Norwich, Cambridge and York he joined the Babraham Institute Laboratory of Molecular Signalling where he worked on both ligand-gated acetylcholine receptors and the inositol trisphosphate (IP3) receptor. He subsequently became an MRC Senior Fellow and moved to the Department of Zoology in Cambridge where he went on to become a Lecturer, then a Reader and more recently Deputy Head of Department. Howard’s research focuses on the integrative physiology of IP3 mediated signalling using the model organism C. elegans. He has also worked on TRP channels and on the development of C. elegans models of human disease.

Speakers

Dr Jamel Mankouri

Research in my laboratory focuses on understanding the interaction between clinically important human viruses with cellular ion channels. We have recently demonstrated that by pharmacologically modulating cellular ion channels, we can impede the lifecycles of an array of important human viruses. Research in my laboratory focuses on understanding why viruses require this ion channel activity. These studies will allow a better understanding of the host cell processes that viruses require in order to survive.

Dr William Brackenbury

Will Brackenbury is a Lecturer in Biomedical Sciences in the Department of Biology at the University of York. After a first degree in Biology and a PhD in cell physiology at Imperial College London, he moved to the USA to work in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2006. He returned to the UK in 2011 as a Medical Research Council Fellow and is currently principal investigator of an ion channel research laboratory at the University of York. His research centres on voltage-gated sodium channels, and their role in regulating the ability of cancer cells to move and invade into surrounding tissues. These ion channels are important targets for treatment of epilepsy and his team is currently exploring the possibility that antiepileptic drugs may have value in oncology.

Dr Annarosa Arcangeli

Prof. Arcangeli’s M.D. thesis (1981) contributed to define the cytokinetic characteristics of leukemia cell cycle and growth. After her Specialization in Hemathology (1984), she started studies to define the biophysical aspects of leukemias. Afterwards, she started studies to define the biophysical aspects of leukemias. She got a PhD in Experimental Pathology in 1990.
She is a Member of the Italian Society of Pathology, Associazione Biologica Cellulare e Differenziamento, European Association for Cancer research, American Society of Hemathology.
Since 1998 she teaches at the University of Florence for the following courses: General Pathology; Immunology and Immunological Techniques; Immunopathology; Cytopathology; Oncology. 
Coordinator of a preclinical research group composed of 10 people (with different levels of seniority), Prof. Arcangeli has published 3 books, more than 100 research papers in international peer-reviewed journals. During her teaching activity she has been supervisor of more than 300 graduate students and she has trained more than 30 PhDs in General Pathology and Oncology, including 2 Marie Curie fellows.
Since almost thirty years Dr. Arcangeli is being involved in studies aimed at defining the biophysical aspects of intracellular signalling controlling cell growth and differentiation of tumor cells. She contributed to unravel the action mechanism of widely used inducers of tumor cell differentiation, such as the “hybrid polar compounds” (HPC). She also focused on the role of potassium channels, in particular the hERG1 channel, in the govern of the resting potential, cellular ionic homeostasis and cell signalling in normal and cancer cells. Afterwards, the role of hERG1 channel in cancer establishment and progression was defined, integrating biophysical, biomolecular and genetic approaches. 
She is also a founder and Scientific Coordinator of DI.V.A.L. TOSCANA SRL, a SME engaged in providing advanced biotech solutions (for example, analyzing pharmacological compounds, developing oncological models and producing and manipulating antibodies for research purposes).

Professor Gong Chen

Dr. Gong Chen graduated from Fudan University (Shanghai) in 1987 and obtained his PhD degree with Prof. T.P. Feng in Shanghai Institute of Physiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Dr. Chen did postdoctoral work at Yale University (with Anthony van den Pol) and Stanford University (with Richard Tsien), before starting a faculty position at Pennsylvania State University. He is now a Professor of Biology and Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences at Penn State. Dr. Chen pioneered an innovative in vivo cell conversion technology for brain repair, converting reactive glial cells directly into functional neurons inside adult mouse brain using a single transcription factor NeuroD1. This revolutionary work was published in Cell Stem Cell (Guo et al., 2014) and selected as one of the BEST of 2014 articles. Dr. Chen and colleagues further developed a chemical conversion technology, using small molecules to convert human glial cells into functional neurons (Zhang et al., Cell Stem Cell, 2015), paving the way for a potential drug therapy in the future. To translate this new technology from bench to the bedside, Dr. Chen and collaborators have conducted in vivo cell conversion inside monkey brain and achieved preliminary success. Dr. Chen organized and Chaired the first symposium in history on in vivo cell conversion in the CNS at the 2014 annual meeting of Society for Neuroscience in Washington DC. This symposium is a milestone marking a new field of in vivo cell conversion in regenerative medicine

Professor Mike Edwardson

Mike has spent most of his career in Cambridge. He was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at Trinity College (BA, 1976; PhD 1979). He then worked for a short time as a post-doctoral research associate with Prof. Alan Cuthbert, FRS, before moving in 1980 to a Lectureship at the School of Pharmacy, University of London. He returned to Cambridge in 1984 to a Lectureship. He was subsequently promoted to Reader in 2000 and became Professor of Molecular Pharmacology in 2009. Mike has spent extended periods of research leave at Yale University and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has a wide network of collaborators, within Cambridge, elsewhere in the UK, and in the US, Japan, France, Brazil and Chile. He is a Fellow and Director of Pre-Clinical Studies at Christ’s College. His research interest is in the imaging of biomolecules using atomic force microscopy. He is currently Head of the Department of Pharmacology, University of Cambridge.

Professor Alistair Mathie

Alistair carried out his PhD research at the University of Leicester (1981-1984) supervised by Professor Asa Blakeley and Dr Stewart Petersen, and used intracellular electrophysiological recording techniques to study the electrical responses of sympathetically innervated smooth muscles, following neurotransmitter release at the neuroeffector junction.

Following his PhD, he spent five years as a postdoctoral research associate in the laboratories of Professors David Colquhoun and Stuart Cull-Candy at University College London (UCL) studying the biophysical properties of ligand- and voltage-gated ion channels in single, isolated mammalian neurons using patch-clamp and whole-cell electrophysiological recording techniques. Then, from 1989-1991 he held a Fogarty International Research Fellowship at the University of Washington in Seattle, based in the laboratory of Professor Bertil Hille where the major focus of his research was to apply his experience in electrophysiology to study the intracellular mechanisms activated by neurotransmitters which couple to G-proteins and how these can regulate the activity of voltage-gated ion channels.

In 1991, Alistair was appointed Lecturer in Pharmacology at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine then, following merger, a Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology at UCL. In 1999, he moved to Imperial College London where he took up a position there as Reader in Molecular Neuroscience. In 2007, he was appointed Professor of Pharmacology and Cell Biology, Head of Biological Sciences and Director of Research at the Medway School of Pharmacy.

Professor David Wyllie

My long-standing research interest is in ligand-gated ion channels (LGICs) – specialized pore-forming membrane proteins that are activated by neurotransmitters during ‘fast’ chemical synaptic transmission. In particular my lab studies LGICs activated by L-glutamate – the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the mammalian brain.
Although glutamate activates several different classes of LGIC one in particular, the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) has been a major focus for our research. Through electrophysiological studies, my lab has contributed significantly to our understanding of the structure-function properties and physiological roles of the various subtypes of NMDARs.
NMDARs play pivotal roles in both normal and abnormal brain function. In early life for instance, they ensure that the correct wiring pattern is laid down in the developing brain. Furthermore, activation of NMDARs is required to learn certain tasks and store memories. However, both over- and under-activation of NMDARs can be deleterious for normal brain function. For example, during a stroke excessive activation of NMDARs contributes significantly to neuronal loss, while NMDAR dysfunction is thought to contribute to diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Schizophrenia. More recently it is now recognised that de novo mutations in the protein sequence of NMDARs can lead to intellectual disability. Directly related to our structure-function studies of NMDARs we use pre-clinical models of single gene causes of neurodevelopmental disorders (such as fragile X syndrome) to study the properties of altered synaptic function and to assess the extent to which pharmacological intervention can ameliorate the changes that are observed in such models.
A more recent focus of our research is the electrophysiological and functional characterization of defined neuronal and glial populations derived from human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells and specifically those from individuals suffering from neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases. Our work seeks to assess the electrophysiological profile of such neurons in order to further our understanding of these debilitating diseases.
Our overall aim is to develop an integrated approach to research that begins with the study of single protein molecules and synaptic function and extends, through collaboration with colleagues, to whole animal studies with an ultimate goal of the clinical study and treatment of disease

Dr Ivan Kadurin

Dr Ivan Kadurin completed his MSc degree in Biochemistry at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria in 2002. He then moved to Germany to work at the Department of Physiology of the University of Tubingen, where he first became interested in neurophysiology and obtained his PhD in 2007. 
Ivan undertook his postdoctoral studies at the Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology at UCL, where he currently works as senior Postdoctoral Research Associate in the group of Prof. Annette Dolphin applying research approaches based on biochemical, electrophysiological, and imaging techniques. His work has significantly contributed to revealing important structural, functional and trafficking aspects of voltage-gated calcium (Cav) channel complexes, with regards to their roles in neuronal presynaptic calcium influx. Ivan has been recently awarded with the UCL-Bogue research fellowship for the development of an exchange project at the laboratory of Prof. Riccardo Olcese in UCLA. Here he will implement Voltage-clamp Fluorometry techniques to study the mechanisms of Cav channels activation.

Dr Anthony Lewis

Anthony is a Senior Lecturer in Pharmacology in the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at the University of Portsmouth. He obtained his BSc in Physiology from the University of Leeds in 1998, and stayed on to complete his PhD in the laboratory of Prof Paul Kemp in 2002. He then worked as a post-doc in the Division of Cardiology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York with Prof Geoff Abbott, and in 2005 took a post in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Chicago working with Prof Steve Goldstein until 2009 before moving to Portsmouth to take up his Lectureship post. Anthony’s research career has focussed on the physiological roles of potassium channels in health and disease. His current research aims to understand the biophysics and physiology of novel two-pore potassium channels from human and plant pathogenic fungi as a platform for developing novel anti-fungal therapeutics.

Dr Paul Miller

Paul is a post-doctoral research fellow working in the Division of Structural Biology at the University of Oxford. Previously, he obtained his PhD from the University of London, Pharmacology Department, UCL, performing electrophysiological and pharmacological characterisation of glycine receptors. His focus at Oxford has been to determine structures of GABA-A receptors. Through these structures he is revealing the molecular modes of action of these critical players in inhibitory neurotransmission. His structural studies have also lead to the development of novel ligands with unique modulatory properties, which are important investigational tools, and he hopes these will translate into useful therapeutics in the future.

Professor Luis Pardo 

Luis Pardo’s work has been focused on structure and function of ion channels, mainly potassium channels. After the discovery of the implication of Kv10 channels in cancer in the late 1990s, the interest of the group is centered on understanding the mechanisms ad roles of potassium channels during tumor progression and on the design of diagnostic and therapeutic tools targeting them. Luis Pardo is Max-Planck research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine, Göttingen, Germany since 2008. He has been working at the Department of Molecular Biology of Neuronal Signals led by Prof. Walter Stühmer since 1996. Between 2001 and 2004 he served as CSO at iOnGen AG, Göttingen Germany, a company he founded, together with Walter Stühmer and the Max-Planck Society in 2001. From 1993 to 1996, he was scientist at the Biochemistry Department, University of Oviedo, Spain. Previously, he had received post-doctoral training (1991-1993) in the Department led by Prof. E: Neher at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Göttingen, Germany), after completing his Ph.D. degree at the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department at University of Oviedo (Spain). He also received his M.D. from this University in 1986.

Professor Junko Kurokawa 

Dr. Junko Kurokawa obtained her BSc (1993) and PhD (1998) at the University of Tokyo in Tokyo. Dr. Kurokawa did postdoctoral work at Georgetown University (with Prof. Martin Morad) and Columbia University (with Prof. Robert S Kass), before starting a faculty position at Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Medical Research Institute. Junko’s work has been focused on regulation of cardiac ion channels by signaling molecules, cAMP, NO and sex hormones. In 2016, Dr. Kurokawa was appointed a professor in Bio-informational Pharmacology at Pharmaceutical School of University of Shizuoka. Her current research aims to identify novel molecular mechanisms of sex differences in ion channels not only at heart but also at other organs.

Professor Stephen Tucker 

Stephen Tucker is a Professor of Biophysics in the Clarendon Laboratory at the University of Oxford, and also Director the Wellcome Trust PhD programme in Ion Channels and Disease. After studying Biochemistry at Oxford he did his PhD at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at the John Radcliffe Hospital studying the CFTR chloride channel. After this he went to the Vollum Institute, Oregon USA for two years as a Wellcome Trust International Prize Travelling, and in 1996 he returned to Oxford as a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow where he worked closely with Prof Dame Frances Ashcroft, FRS on the ATP-sensitive K+ channel and other inwardly-rectifying K+ channels. In 2000 he was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Dept Physiology, and in 2008 he was appointed to a University Lecturership in the Dept Physics. In 2015 he was made a Professor of Biophysics in the Dept Physics, and is currently a fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. The Tucker lab employs a wide range of structural, functional and computational approaches to study ion channels, and current work is focussed on the Two-Pore domain (K2P) family of potassium channels.

Mark R. Estacion, PhD

Mark has been working in the group of Dr. Stephen Waxman at Yale University since 2007 focusing on the role that voltage-gated sodium channels play in modulating sensory neuron excitability. Before that he has worked at the MetroHealth Medical center in Cleveland focusing on mammalian Trp channels and at UC Irvine studying FGF-receptor induced calcium influx.

His current research interests are focused on detailed characterization of the role voltage-gated sodium channels play in neurological syndromes such as inflammatory and neuropathic pain. Mark employs patch-clamp electrophysiology and live-cell optical imaging techniques to monitor ion fluxes that are involved in signal transduction in various cell culture model systems. Specifically, he has been studying voltage-gated sodium channel mutants expressed in both HEK cells as well as primary neurons. A focus of this research is to understand the role of specific NaV subtypes in pain sensation.

Shingetoshi Oiki, PhD

Shigetoshi Oiki is a Professor of Physiology at the University of Fukui. He completed his PhD degree at Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine in 1986. From 1986 to 1989, he studied model peptide channels using planar lipid bilayers at Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, and at Cornell University Medical College. Returning back to Kyoto University, he started molecular biological studies of channel proteins. In the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, he studied the structure-function relationships of an inward rectifier K channel using the Xenopus oocyte expression system. Since 1998 in the University of Fukui, he has investigated molecular mechanism of channel gating and permeation in the single-molecule level. To understand the physicochemical basis of ion permeation and gating, methods covering from the computer simulation, theoretical model analysis, lipid bilayer methods, the diffracted X-ray tracking method and atomic force microscopy have been applied. Recently, his group reported that the KcsA channel underwent clustering and dispersion on the membrane in a gating status dependent manner.

Dr Neil Castle

Neil Castle is Vice President of Research at Icagen, a company that supports ion channel drug discovery needs for the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. Prior to spinning out of Pfizer in 2015, Icagen was part of Pfizer’s Pain and sensory disorders research unit where Dr Castle was Director of Biology and a member of the Pain Research Unit leadership team. Dr Castle was the research project leader for Pfizer’s preclinical Nav1.7 program, which led the industry in the development of the first truly subtype selective small molecule inhibitors targeting a previously unknown interaction site on one of the voltage sensor domains. During his tenure at Pfizer, Dr Castle also led a team that successfully stably expressed and a ran a drug candidate discovery campaign against this historically challenging Nav1.9 sodium channel, which is currently receiving considerable interest as a potential target for new pain therapies due to human genetic pain disorders being recently associated with mutations if this channel. Prior to its acquisition by Pfizer in 2011, Dr Castle was a founder and served as Director of Biology and Senior Research Advisor of Icagen for more than a decade, participating in and/or leading a broad spectrum of ion channel focused drug discovery programs targeting neuroexcitatory, cardiovascular and immune/inflammatory disorders. Prior to Icagen, Dr Castle spent 8 years at Harvard Medical School, first as a Post-Doctoral Fellow and then as an Assistant Professor. Dr Castle received his BSc and PhD in Pharmacology from University College London. Dr Castle also currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the NIH CounterAct Program at UC Davis. He has over 40 scientific publications and is co-inventor of five patents.

Professor Trevor Smart 

Trevor Smart holds the Schild Chair in Pharmacology and is the Head of the Research Department of Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology at UCL. He also Chairs the UCL Neuroscience Research Domain.

His work is focussed on the molecular pharmacology and physiology of GABAA and glycine receptors which are the major inhibitory neurotransmitter receptor in the brain pivotally involved in controlling nerve cell excitability. Both receptors feature prominently in neurological diseases with the GABA receptor being a target for several therapeutic classes of drugs.

Using multidisciplinary electrophysiological, imaging and structural approaches, he aims to understand how GABA and glycine receptors function in the nervous system. Numerous seminal discoveries have resulted regarding their structure-function properties, revealing where various ligands can bind to these receptors and how they affect function, as well as probing receptor regulation by anchoring and trafficking proteins and by phosphorylation. These studies have elucidated the mechanisms involved in GABA and glycine receptor targeting to, and regulation at, synapses (plasticity) in both healthy and diseased states.

Professor David Beeson

David Beeson graduated from Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he specialised in Genetics. On leaving Cambridge, he did his PhD with Professor Eric Barnard at Imperial College, London, focusing on the first cloning of muscle acetylcholine receptors. In 1988 he moved with the group of John Newsom-Davis and Angela Vincent to the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, at the University of Oxford, to work on disorders of neuromuscular transmission. In 1998 he was awarded an MRC Senior Non-Clinical Fellowship, and made a Professor of Neuroscience in 2004. In early studies he was the first to clone many of the genes encoding key proteins at the human neuromuscular junction, and more recently his research has focused on identifying and understanding the genes and molecular mechanisms that underlie congenital myasthenic syndromes. The research has involved close clinical collaborations and the success of the work enables the National Commissioning Group of the NHS to make Oxford the National Centre for a Diagnostic and Advisory Service for these disorders.

Professor Guiseppe Lauria

Prof. Giuseppe Lauria is Director of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Deputy Scientific Director at the IRCCS “Carlo Besta” Neurological Institute of Milan, Italy. He received the degree in Medicine at the University of Padova and trained as resident in Neurology at the University of Ferrara. He has been fellow at the Department of Neuroscience of the Johns Hopkins University, USA. Prof. Lauria has pioneered the use of skin biopsy in peripheral neuropathies and neuropathic pain syndromes, contributed to the discovery of new phenotypes and gene mutations in small fibre neuropathies and participated in several guidelines for the clinical practice.

Professor Andrew Tinker

Andrew Tinker trained as a physician before undertaking pre and postdoctoral training in the UK and USA working on cardiac excitation-contraction coupling and the molecular properties of potassium channels. He returned to the UK and worked for a long time at University College, London as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research fellow in Clinical Science and subsequently Professor of Molecular Medicine. He recently moved to Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry to take up a Chair of Cardiac Electrophysiology. His scientific interests revolve around the molecular properties and regulation of cardiac and smooth muscle cell excitability with a particular focus on cardiac arrhythmia, potassium channels and G-protein signalling. In recognition of his work in this area he was made a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2006.

Dr Aneesh Karatt-Vellatt

Dr Aneesh Karatt-Vellatt is a Senior Research Scientist at Iontas Ltd. Aneesh joined Iontas after completing his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge. His PhD focused on engineering naturally occurring cysteine-knot mini proteins (Knottins) using phage display technology. Using his expertise in phage display technology and protein engineering, Aneesh has developed the KnotBodyTM technology at Iontas to generate specific modulators of ion channels involved in pain, autoimmunity and cancer.

Dr Norio Hashimoto

Norio Hashimoto is Cardiovascular Research Group manager in Nissan Chemical Industries, Ltd, a Japanese-based chemical manufacturing company. He obtained his BSc (1996) and MSc (1996) in pharmacology at Osaka University of Pharmaceutical Sciences and his Ph.D. in pharmacology at Toho University in 2009. He has worked for Nissan Chemical since 1998 and was the project manager for Nissan’s anti-atrial fibrillation drug program, which is the first drug candidate targeting IKACh to enter clinical trial. Dr. Hashimoto has been working for ion channel drug discovery targeting T-type calcium channel and some other sodium and potassium channels in cardiovascular, metabolic and neurological disease fields.