Takashi Koyama

Dr. Koyama is a vice director of the Saitama Municipal Hospital near Tokyo, Japan. He graduated from the Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo in 1985 and received a Ph.D. there in 1997. His Ph.D. was based on his experimental studies around 1990, during his early clinical career, investigating the mechanism of ischemia-reperfusion injury. He is a clinical cardiologist, who received his training at Keio University Hospital and its affiliated local community hospitals, including the Saitama Municipal Hospital. In 1992, he suspended his clinical career and moved to the University of Utah in Utah, USA (Prof. William H. Barry), where he worked as a research fellow in the department of cardiology for further experimental investigation on the mechanism of ischemia-reperfusion injury. After returning to Japan in 1994, he then devoted himself mostly to clinical works in affiliated hospitals of Keio University including percutaneous coronary intervention for patients with coronary artery disease. Later in life, his experiences in reperfusion therapy for many patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and in his past experimental research investigating the mechanism of ischemia-reperfusion injury inspired him to develop a new treatment strategy for myocardial reperfusion injury in patients with STEMI undergoing reperfusion therapy (postconditioning with lactate-enriched blood [PCLeB]). This new method for cardioprotection in humans emerged from his earlier experimental study using guinea-pig myocytes, published in 1991 (Am J Physiol 1991;261; H1115–22). The first paper on this new approach, i.e., PCLeB, was published in 2013 (Cardiology 2013:125:92-3). Therefore, it took decades for him to translate the results of his experimental studies into clinical practice.