Shugo Sasaki

Dr. Shugo Sasaki’s research interest is to carry on regeneration therapy in the field of diabetes. He was a practicing endocrinologist in Osaka, Japan for 10 years before his research took him to Vancouver.

During his doctorate, Sasaki focused his research on a new cell therapy for those with type 1 diabetes who have lost functional pancreatic beta cells. He generated a new transgenic mouse model and revealed that activation of two hormonal (GLP-1 and gastrin) signaling induces beta cell neogenesis in the exocrine lineage without any deleterious pancreatic changes. The importance of this work was recognized with the 2015 Young Investigator’s Award of the Japan Endocrine Society and the oral presentation at the American Diabetes Association (ADA) Annual Scientific Sessions. Furthermore, this research was published in Diabetologia, a top peer-reviewed international diabetes journal.

Today, Sasaki is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia where he is testing human embryonic stem cell-derived surrogate beta cells that are genetically edited to produce a specific protein, which helps protect beta cell transplants from death and dysfunction in diabetes.

For an up-to-date list of publications by Dr. Sasaki, please see ResearchGate.