Invited Speakers

Kazunori Kataoka

Director General

Innovation Center of NanoMedicine (iCONM)

Kawasaki Institute of Industrial Promotion

3-25-14 Tonomachi, Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki 210-0821

Japan

Group Website: http://iconm.kawasaki-net.ne.jp

Dr. Kazunori Kataoka received his Ph.D. (1979) in Polymer Chemistry from The University of Tokyo. He started his academic career at Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Tokyo Women’s Medical College as Assistant Professor (1979) and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1988. He moved to Department of Materials Engineering, Tokyo University of Science in 1989 as Associate Professor and was promoted to full Professor in 1994. He then moved to Department of Materials Engineering, The University of Tokyo in 1998 as full Professor. He was appointed joint-position of full Professor at Center for Disease Biology and Integrative Medicine, The University of Toyo Medical School in 2004. In 2016, he took mandatory retirement from Graduate School of Engineering/Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, and moved to the current position. He has been appointed as Adjunct Professor at Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill since 2015, and as Director, Biomedical Insitute for Convergence at SKKU (BICS) at Sungyunkwan University, Korea since 2016. He has received several scientific awards, including the Clemson Award from the Society for Biomaterials, USA (2005), the Founder’s Award from the Controlled Release Society (2008), Humboldt Research Award from Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2012), Leo Esaki Prize (2012) and Gutenberg Research Award from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany (2015). He has been elected as a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and as a Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors (NAI) since 2017. Dr. Kataoka has published over 500 peer-reviewed papers (H-index 130). He has been on the board of 15 international journals, including Editor of Journal of Biomaterials Science, Polymer Edition and Associate Editor of ACS Nano. His current major research interests include supramolecular materials for nanobiotechnology, focusing on drug and gene delivery systems.

Representative Publications

[1] T. Yang, Y. Mochida, X. Liu, H. Zhou, J. Xie, Y. Anraku, H. Kinoh, H. Cabral, K. Kataoka, Conjugation of glucosylated polymer chains to checkpoint blockade antibodies augments their efficacy and specificity for glioblastoma. Nat. Biomed. Eng. 5 (11) 1274-1287 (2021).

[2] T. A. Tockary, S. Abbasi, M. Matsui- Masai, A. Hayashi, N. Yoshinaga, E. Boonstra, Z. Wang, S. Fukushima, K. Kataoka, S. Uchida, Comb-structured mRNA vaccine tethered with short double-stranded RNA adjuvants maximizes cellular immunity for cancer treatment. PNAS, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 120 (29) e2214320120 (2023).

[3] M. Panagi, F. Mpekris, P. Chen, C. Voutouri, Y. Nakagawa, J. D. Martin, T. Hiroi, H. Hashimoto, P. Demetriou, C. Pierides, R. Samuel, A. Stylianou, C. Michael, S. Fukushima, P. Georgiou, P. Papageorgis, P. Ch. Papaphilippou, L. Koumas, P. Costeas, G. Ishii, M. Kojima, K. Kataoka, H. Cabral, T. Stylianopoulos, Polymeric micelles effectively reprogram the tumor microenvironment to potentiate nano-immunotherapy in mouse breast cancer models. Nat. Commun. 13, 7165 (2022).

[4] D. G.-Carter, X. Liu, T. A. Tockary, A. Dirisala, K. Toh, Y. Anraku, K. Kataoka, Targeting nanoparticles to the brain by exploiting the blood-brain barrier impermeability to selectively label the brain endothelium. PNAS, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 117, 19141-19150 (2020).

[5] A. Dirisala, S. Uchida, K. Toh, J. Li, S. Osawa, T. A. Tockary, X. Liu, S. Abbasi, K. Hayashi, Y. Mochida, S. Fukushima, H. Kinoh, K. Osada, K. Kataoka, Transient stealth coating of liver sinusoidal wall by anchoring two-armed PEG for retargeting nanomedicines. Sci. Adv. 6, eabb8133 (2020).