Toshiaki Furuta

Toshiaki Furuta is a Professor in the Department of Biomolecular Science, Faculty of Science, Toho University (Narashino Campus) in Funabashi, Japan. He received his undergraduate and Ph.D. from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan under the guidance of Professor Emeritus Yoshinori Yamamoto. During his Ph.D. years, he studied the total syntheses of natural products and acyclic stereocontrol using organometallic compounds. In 1990, he was appointed as an assistant professor at the Chemistry Department, Tohoku University, and then moved to Toho University where he started his chemical biology work. As a post-doctoral fellow (1997-1998) in Roger Y. Tsien’s lab at the Department of Pharmacology, UC, San Diego, La Jolla, California, he designed and synthesized a new type of caging group with improved photochemical properties under one and two-photon excitation conditions. His current research programs focus on the development of photo-caging groups that can target specified cells to expand the usefulness of caged compounds.