Takashi Kiyoizumi
MD, PhD, MBA

Takashi Kiyoizumi is an executive and entrepreneur with over 40 years in the life sciences industry. He has been a member of the board of BTB Therapeutics Co., Ltd. since 2023, and has held his current position since 2024. He is an investment member of the NuFund Venture Group, an angel investor group in San Diego, California. In 2005, as the founder and CEO of MediciNova Inc. (NASDAQ: MNOV), he raised over $180mm through private placement and an initial public offering within five years of the company’s founding. Prior to founding MediciNova, he was CEO of Tanabe Research Laboratories, USA, the US subsidiary of Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation. He received his MD and PhD from Keio University School of Medicine, and also holds an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Masatoshi Hagiwara
MD, PhD

Masatoshi Hagiwara is currently a specially-appointed Professor and the Chair of the Department of Drug Discovery Medicine at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, and also serves as the Director of the Kyoto University Medical Research Support Center. He received his MD and PhD from the Mie University School of Medicine, he contributed to the identification of the mechanisms of action of vinpocetine (Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.) and cilostazol (Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.), and to the development of fasudil (Asahi Kasei Pharma Corporation). After working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Science in San Diego, CA, he held positions as an Assistant Professor at Nagoya University School of Medicine, and as a Professor at the Medical Research Institute at Tokyo Medical and Dental University. He has been engaged in basic research on RNA biology as a Professor at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine since 2010. Based on the results of this research, he has developed transcriptome drug discovery. He is also a serial entrepreneur, and has founded KinoPharma Inc. (2005-: anti-viral drug development), HiLung Inc. (2020-: respiratory medicine CRO), and BTB Therapeutics Co., Ltd. (2020-). He is the founder of the Japanese Society for Chemical Biology, and was elected as the President of the International Society for Chemical Biology in 2012.

Tsuyoshi Ogiku
PhD

Tsuyoshi Ogiku is a veteran of the pharmaceutical industry with over 30 years of research and management experience and is a former Deputy Director of the Research and Development Division at Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation. During his tenure at Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, he was involved in the development of blockbuster drugs such as canagliflozin, a drug for type 2 diabetes(Invokana, licensed to Janssen Pharmaceutical K.K.) , and evocalcet, a calcium receptor agonist for the treatment of hypercalcemia and secondary hyperthyroidism (licensed to Orkedia and Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd.).
He is a specially-appointed Professor at the Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine, and Vice-Director of the Kyoto University Medical Science and Business Liaison Organization, and Senior Advisor, at the Institute for Advanced Clinical and Translational Science, at the Kyoto University Hospital. He received a doctorate degree (Doctor of Science) at the Graduate School of Science, Osaka University.

Tetsuharu Nagamoto
MD

Tetsuharu Nagamoto is a practicing pediatrician, and specialized in the life sciences industry for many years at a major consulting firm, where he assisted clients in incorporating innovative research results and technologies into their global strategies, businesses, and organizational structures. He has also been involved in global standardization negotiations and pharmaceutical affairs in the biotechnology industry at a think tank. He is a Co-Founder of the BTB Therapeutics Co., Ltd., a Co-Founder and Director of HiLung Inc., and a Co-Founder and Medical Director of other medical device startups in Japan and the US. He received his MD from Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine.

Nobuhiro Yagi
PhD

Nobuhiro Yagi is Executive Officer and General Manager of Investment Department 1 at Kyoto University Innovation Capital Co., Ltd. (Kyoto iCAP). He worked for Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Ltd. for 18 years, holding key positions in biopharmaceutical R&D and business development. He has also conducted research at academic research institutions including Kyoto University, RIKEN, the University of Tokyo, and the University of California, San Diego. He also serves as Deputy Director of the Kyoto University Institutional Advancement and Communications Department.

Silvio Gutkind
MD, PhD

Distinguished Professor and Chair, Department of Pharmacology of UC San Diego School of Medicine

Mariano A. Garcia-Blanco
MD, PhD
Profile 　LinkedIn

Mariano A Garcia-Blanco received his MD and PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University, and completed a fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Garcia-Blanco has been in the faculty at Duke University, Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, and the University of Texas Medical Branch. Currently he is the F. Palmer Weber Medical Research Professor and Chair of the department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology at the University of Virginia. He is an expert in RNA biology and RNA virology who has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health since 1991, has published more than 195 articles, and has mentored more than 60 doctoral and postdoctoral trainees. Professor Garcia-Blanco was elected to the Association of American Physicians (2011), fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (2011), fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (2013), and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2022). He has been the scientific founder of Intronn, Singapore Advanced Biologics, Autoimmunity BioSolutions, and Emervax. He is an advisor for Ascidian Therapeutics (USA), Exonate (UK) and BTB Therapeutics (Japan).