Biography

Dr Kohji Fukunaga was born in 1955 in Kagoshima, Japan. He received his BSc (1978) and PhD degrees (1985) from Kumamoto University. In 1982, he first discovered calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) from rat brain and extensively defined role of CaMKII in the hippocampal LTP and spine formation. He joined Kumamoto University School of Medicine in 1990 as an assistant professor and was promoted to an associate professor in 1993. During 1988 to 1990 he joined as a research fellow in HHMI of Vanderbilt University under Professor TR Soderling. In 2002, he was appointed a professor and chairman in Department of Pharmacology, Tohoku University Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. He is Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Pharmacological Sciences (Elsevier) since 2012. He has developed disease-modifying drugs for AD, PD and DLB.