Masamitsu Kanada, PhD

he/his/him
Assistant Professor (Fixed-term)
Pharmacology & Toxicology

Bio

My career objective is to become an academic investigator who uses multidisciplinary approaches to address questions in human diseases. I have learned surface chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular and cell biology with expertise in live cell imaging by fluorescence microscopy and whole-body optical preclinical imaging. In addition, with my experience working in a pharmaceutical company, I have gained expertise in drug screening that I brought to my academic appointment. This diverse research background positions me well for building an interdisciplinary research program geared toward the early detection of diseases and developing novel therapeutics. Currently, we are advancing the understanding of EV-mediated intercellular communication and engineering EVs to create targeted gene/drug delivery tools. My research focus is to characterize the ability of EVs to transfer signals to adjacent and distant cells in the body and use this ability to deliver therapy effectively to diseased sites.

Colleges

• College of Human Medicine

Education

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine (2012—2017)
• Ph.D., Cell Biology, University of Tsukuba (2003—2008)
• B.S., Biochemical Engineering, Tohoku University (1999-04-01—2003-03-31)

Funding

• Ultrasound-assisted extracellular vesicle engineering and induced release: EVEiR, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (2022-09-01—2025-06-30)

Works

• Minicircle DNA vectors: A breakthrough in non-viral delivery of CRISPR base editors?. Molecular Therapy - Nucleic Acids (2024)
• Cyanine lipids promote the shedding of extracellular vesicles from cell membranes. Precision Nanomedicine (2023-09-15)
• Phosphatidylserine-Exposing Annexin A1-Positive Extracellular Vesicles: Potential Cancer Biomarkers. Vaccines (2023-03-13)
• Cord Blood Plasma and Placental Mesenchymal Stem Cells-Derived Exosomes Increase Ex Vivo Expansion of Human Cord Blood Hematopoietic Stem Cells While Maintaining Their Stemness. Cells (2023)
• Phosphatidylserine-exposing medium/large extracellular vesicles: potential cancer biomarkers. (2022-11-17)
• Gla-domain mediated targeting of externalized phosphatidylserine for intracellular delivery. (2022-06-14)
• In Vitro and In Vivo Analysis of Extracellular Vesicle‐Mediated Metastasis Using a Bright, Red‐Shifted Bioluminescent Reporter Protein. Advanced Genetics (2022)
• A Dual-Reporter Platform for Screening Tumor-Targeted Extracellular Vesicles. Pharmaceutics (2022-02-22)
• A Dual-reporter Platform for Screening Tumor-targeted Extracellular Vesicles. (2021-12-12)
• Molecular Communications in Viral Infections Research: Modeling, Experimental Data, and Future Directions. IEEE Transactions on Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications (2021)
• Visualizing Extracellular Vesicles and Their Function in 3D Tumor Microenvironment Models. International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2021-04-30)
• Use of artificial cells as drug carriers. Materials Chemistry Frontiers (2021)

Employment

• Assistant Professor, Michigan State University (2017-07-01)