ICBS Announces New President, President-Elect

Masatoshi Hagiwara, PhD, to Serve as ICBS President 2013-2014

Masatoshi Hagiwara, PhD, is an academic leader in chemical biology and the mechanism-driven drug discovery field. Dr. Hagiwara currently serves as professor and chair of the Department of Anatomy & Developmental Biology, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Japan. He was a founding member of Board of Directors for the ICBS, and served as the president of the Japanese Society for Chemical Biology. 

He earned his medical degree and PhD from Mie University School of Medicine in Japan. As a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute in Dr. Marc Montminy’s laboratory, Dr. Hagiwara made a number of seminal discoveries, including the role of PP-1-mediated dephosphorylation of CREB in transcriptional attenuation following cAMP induction and the identification of CBP as a phosphorylated CREB binding protein.  

In 1993, Dr. Hagiwara returned to Japan and started his laboratory at Nagoya University School of Medicine as an Assistant Professor. He became a professor in the Medical Research Institute of Tokyo Medical and Dental University, and there he began his work aimed at deciphering the splicing code. Also during this time, he was selected to serve as the Director of Biomedical Science PhD Program (2003-2006) and the General Manager of the Intellectual Property Center (2003-2006). In 2010, Dr. Hagiwara was recruited to Kyoto University to lead the Anatomy and Developmental Biology department.

Throughout his career, Dr. Hagiwara has focused on mechanism studies and small molecule modulator discoveries. As a medical student at Mie University School of Medicine, he studied in the Department of Pharmacology (chaired by Prof. Hiroyoshi Hidaka) and found that a semisynthetic alkaloid, Vinpocetine, caused vasodilation by inhibiting a specific type of a cyclic nucleotide phosphodiesterase through the same mechanism as Viagra. The chemical was developed as a clinical drug to improve blood circulation in the brain by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. His PhD research focused on the mechanism of isoquinolinesulfonamide inhibition of protein kinases. He successfully developed a number of specific kinase inhibitors, such as H-89 (PKA kinase inhibitor), KN62 (CaM kinase inhibitor) and CKI-7 (Casein kinase I inhibitor). One of the compounds, Fasudil (Rho kinase inhibitor), has been developed as a clinical drug for treating subarachnoid hemorrhage.

His recent research has led to establishment of splicing reporter systems which allow visualization the tissue-specific and/or developmental stage-specific alternative splicing of pre-mRNAs. He is developing novel chemical compounds, which alter the amounts and patterns of mRNA splice variants to identify new therapeutics for congenital diseases.  

Melvin Reichman, PhD, Named ICBS President-Elect

Dr. Mel Reichman received his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Rochester Center for Brain Research. He has held several leadership positions in pharma over his 20-year career in industry, including: Head, Cellular Pharmacology Laboratory at G.D. Searle; Head, Molecular Pharmacology Laboratory at Berlex Biosciences; Director New Leads Discovery at Ligand Pharmaceuticals; Head of Drug Discovery Operations at Oncogene Science and Director, HTS Project Planning and Management at DuPont Pharma.

He has co-authored 28 peer-reviewed publications and has delivered more than 50 invited talks worldwide on all aspects of drug discovery from concept to clinic. He has been an ad-hoc reviewer for many NIH study sections, is an editor of several leading journals and is a scientific advisor in pharmaceutical R&D for startup companies.

 He joined Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR) in 2006 as Senior Investigator and founded the LIMR Chemical Genomics Center (LCGC) in 2007, where he serves as president and CSO.He will assume the presidency of ICBS following the 3rd Annual Conference in San Francisco in 2014.