Takaaki ABE received medical training of Nephrology in Tohoku University.
He developed a graduate school research in Kyoto University. After that, with the support of JSPS and the Human Frontier Research Program, he moved to Harvard Medical School as a post-doctoral fellow. From 1997 with the support of JST (PREST), he started researches on uremic toxins and chronic kidney diseases (CKD) in Tohoku University. Now, his research field is wide from gut microbiota to mitochondria, integrating to develop new remedies. He found a new drug (MA-5) for mitochondrial diseases with the support of Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED). He also makes research on the relation between gut microbiota and CKD and performed doctor-lead clinical trial.
In 2021, he was selected as a program manager of JAPAN Moonshot Program (AMED).
Mitochondria are responsible for more than 90% of the intracellular energy production of living organisms, and malfunction of mitochondria causes various pathological conditions due to a decrease in ATP. When we hear the word “Mitochondrial diseases”, we think of diseases that commonly occur in children (MELAS, Leigh encephalopathy, etc., mitochondrial defect diseases, in the narrow sense). In addition, in hearing loss, ALS, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, cancer, and kidney disease, gene or enzyme abnormalities or abnormal mitochondrial function is thought to be involved in the progression of the diseases, influencing the prognosis (mitochondrial disease in a broad sense). Therefore, restoring degraded mitochondrial function is the "central dogma" that leads to a healthy life expectancy while maintaining quality of life.
We found that the indole compound MA-5, whose lead compound is indoleacetic acid (IAA), also known as the plant hormone auxin, has the effect of increasing intracellular ATP
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