Career History & Research Interests

Takatsugu Ishimoto received an M.D. from Kumamoto University School of Medicine in 2001. After completing the surgical residency-fellowship program (2001-2006), he received Ph.D. degree under Prof. Hideo Baba at Kumamoto University Graduate School of Medical Sciences in 2009. He finished a post-doctoral fellowship in Prof. Hideyuki Saya’s Lab at Keio University Graduate School of Medicine (2009-2011). After that, he was promoted to an assistant professor and has been engaged in surgical clinical practice and cancer research at Kumamoto University Hospital (2011-2014). At present, he is working as a visiting assistant professor at Prof. Patrick Tan’s Lab at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore.

His research interests are cancer stem cell biology and the molecular mechanism underlying the interaction between cancer cells and tumor microenvironment, especially for gastrointestinal cancers.