Kensei Taguchi

Dr. Kensei Taguchi is a postdoctoral research fellow in Division of Nephrology and Hypertension, Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. He received a M.D. degree from Kurume University School of Medicine of Japan in 2006 and a Ph.D. from Kurume University Graduate school.

During his clinical practice, Dr. Taguchi saw many of the patients develop complications due to dialysis and felt there had to be a better solution. Then, he started pursing a PhD with the hopes of finding new treatment options that can be translated from bench to bedside. While he was in graduate school, he studied the pathological role of receptor for advanced glycation endproducts (RAGE) in diabetic and hypertensive nephropathy. He also created DNA aptamer directed against RAGE which can block the interaction of ligands and RAGE and confirmed its inhibitory efficacy. During a postdoctoral training in Vanderbilt, Nashville, Tennessee, he utilized super resolution microscopy to investigate the morphological changes of mitochondrial following kidney injury. In addition, he has been engaged in investigating the mechanism of how acute kidney injury predisposes patients to chronic injury. Dr. Taguchi received a research fund from American Heart Association (2020-2021).