Masaaki Komatsu
Department of Biochemistry Niigata University School of Medicine ,Niigata, Japan
Dr. Komatsu is the Professor at the Department of Biochemistry Niigata University School of Medicine (Niigata, Japan). His laboratory has extensive experience in mouse biology, genetics, and phenotyping. His laboratory generated the first conditional knockout mice for an autophagy-essential gene (Atg7) and found the accumulation of p62 and ubiquitin-positive aggregates in autophagy-deficient hepatocytes, which was associated with hepatic dysfunction and subsequent tumorigenesis. Dr. Komatsu’s current research goal is the clarification of physiological roles of autophagy-specific substrates and of their autophagic turnover.Dr. Komatsu has published more than 130 papers in this area.