Kenichi Okuda, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Areas of Interest
Pathophysiology of airway mucociliary clearance, cell and molecular biology of human distal airways, airway host innate defense system
About
Dr. Okuda successfully characterized the regional expression patterns of major airway secretory mucins, MUC5AC and MUC5B, and CFTR/ionocytes in normal and disease human airways during his postdoctoral training at University of North Carolina (Okuda, K., et al, Am J Respir Crit Care Med, 2019, 2021). Within these works, he developed microdissection techniques for small airway tissue isolation and in vitro small airway epithelial cell cultures to understand small airway-specific epithelial cell biology and physiology, which have been widely utilized in multiple collaborative projects nationwide, including the NIH-funded Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP). Dr. Okuda’s research interest focuses on cell- and cite-specific regulatory mechanisms that maintain airway mucus homeostasis in health and how they fail in muco-obstructive lung diseases.
-
MD
Yamagata University, Yamagata, Japan
-
Residency
Sunagawa City Medical Center, Hokkaido, Japan
-
Fellowship
Tokyo National Hospital, Tokyo, Japan
-
PhD
Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan