Prof. Tomo Nozaki

Professor Tomo Nozaki, M.D Professor., Ph.D., is the President of the Japanese Society of Parasitology and was appointed as Professor at the Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, in 2017.

He graduated from Keio University School of Medicine in 1987 and spent seven years of post-doctoral training working on molecular parasitology at the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the Rockefeller University in the US.

He also worked on genome plasticity, drug resistance, and virulence mechanisms of Trypanosoma cruzi, an etiological agent of Chagas’ disease (American trypanosomiasis), and T. brucei, responsible for African sleeping sickness. When Professor Nozaki moved back to Japan in 1996, his research at Keio University focused on the virulence mechanisms of the enteric protozoan Entamoeba histolytica and its unique sulfur-containing amino acid metabolisms.

In 1999, he was appointed laboratory head at the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, and as Full Professor at Gunma University in 2004. In 2008, he returned to the National Institute of Infectious Diseases as Director of the Department of Parasitology. He was also a Professor at the University of Tsukuba and Waseda University. In the past 20 years, he has worked mainly on two aspects of infections caused by Entamoeba histolytica. He also dissected the virulence mechanisms at the molecular level, mainly focusing on vesicular trafficking, trogocytosis, phagocytosis, and secretion of cytolytic factors.

He is interested in drug development against parasitic diseases and has been working on metabolisms of essential biomolecules, such as sulfur-containing amino acids and coenzyme A in this parasite, which led to the identification of a few lines of new chemotherapeutics against amebiasis and malaria. His research also focuses on the unique evolution of the mitochondrion-related organelles, “mitosomes” in Entamoeba.