• Text in Japanese

We aim to overcome TGCV, a novel rare cardiovascular disease discovered in Japan (Hirano K, et al. N Engl J Med. 2008) one day sooner

On February 1, 2021, I was appointed as a Specially Appointed Professor (full-time) of Department of Triglyceride Science, Osaka University, Graduate School of Medicine. I graduated from Nagoya University School of Medicine in 1985 and immediately entered the Second Department of Internal Medicine (headed by Professor Seiichiro Tarui) of Osaka University. After receiving training at the Department of Internal Medicine, Osaka University Hospital and Toyonaka Municipal Hospital, I returned to the Second Department of Internal Medicine and belonged to the Laboratory of Cardiovascular Lipidology where I was under the guidance of Professor Yuji Matsuzawa. Since my first patient had myocardial infarction with diabetes mellitus, I have been studying as a clinical medical researcher with “cardiovascular” and “lipid” as key words.

Due to the reorganization of clinical departments that began around 2000, I became a member of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine and was appointed by Professor Masatsugu Hori as the chief physician of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Osaka University Hospital. When I learned that there is an absolute shortage of heart transplant donors in Japan, I made up my mind to “elucidate the causes of unexplained heart diseases, develop treatment methods, and hopefully give back beneficial research results to the particular patients who consented and co-operated the above research activities”. Everything I learned in the Second Department of Internal Medicine and the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine have helped me to discover and report triglyceride deposit cardiomyovasculopathy (TGCV) in 2008. TGCV is a disease model that shows new functions and pathological relevance of triglycerides in vivo that had not been assumed before, such as atherosclerosis in which triglycerides, instead of cholesterol, accumulate in coronary arteries, regardless of body mass index and serum triglyceride levels. In 2009, with the national budget for intractable disease project, I established Hirano (CNT) Laboratory at the current RIKEN Osaka campus to establish the disease concept, formulate diagnostic criteria, and develop treatment methods together with collaborators from Japan and overseas. In 2019, TGCV was registered internationally (ORPHA code: 565612), and CNT-01, the therapeutic drug we developed, was designated as a “pioneering drug” by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare for the first time in academia. This department will promote clinical research aiming at the designation of TGCV as an intractable disease and the regulatory approval of CNT-01 as soon as possible, and will also conduct basic research such as detailed elucidation of the molecular mechanism of onset of TGCV and the mechanism of action of CNT-01.

I would like to learn about triglycerides, a familiar but still largely unknown lipid, and send a message about Triglyceride Science from Osaka University to contribute to solving global health problems.