Basic Research Workshop

Mario Strazzabosco MD, PhD, is Professor of Medicine at Yale University, CT. He is Director of the Yale Liver Cancer Programat Smilow Hospital and Co-Director of the Yale Liver Center. Dr. Strazzabosco is the principal investigator in a number of research projects in the field of hepatology, and health care management and directs an NIH-sponsored Lab at the Yale University School of Medicine. His main current research interests relate to the pathophysiology of biliary tract diseases, biology of liver repair, liver cancer and health care management. He has received numerous awards and is a Fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology (FACG) a Fellow of the European Board of Surgery (transplant) (FEBS) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Study of Liver Disease (FAASLD). 

Takanori Takebe, MD is a Director of Commercial Innovation in Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine (CuSTOM) (2017-), and Associate Professor at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (2015-). He is also Professor at Institute of Research at Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU) (2018-), and the founding director, Communication Design Center, Yokohama City University (2018-), and Principal Investigator at the Takeda-CiRA joint program (2016-). After spending time as a surgical intern at the one of the world’s leading liver transplant center in 2010, he is highly motivated to find alternative approaches to traditional transplantation as he met many patients who were terminal but due to long waiting lists, were unlikely to be recipients of life-saving donor organs. Therefore, after completing his medical degree in 2011, he focused on patient-centered stem cell research, wherein he led a history of innovation for engineering complex hepato-biliary-pancreatic organoids from human stem cells for advancing the study of disease modeling, drug development and transplantation. He was honored with the Robertson Investigator Award, from the New York Stem Cell Foundation, elected member of The American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and also on the board of directors for International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and The Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine (JSRM).