Affiliation: The University of Tokyo, Division for Health Service Promotion,

Yuta Hiraike, M.D., PhD is an Assistant Professor at the Division for Health Service Promotion, The University of Tokyo, and he also serves as The University of Tokyo's Excellent Young Researcher.

Dr. Hiraike earned his M.D. (2010) and Ph.D. (2017) from The University of Tokyo. After serving as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Diabetes and Metabolic Diseases, The University of Tokyo Hospital, Dr. Hiraike moved to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School as a Research Fellow, supported by an Overseas Research Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. In 2021, he returned to The University of Tokyo as an Assistant Professor at the Division for Health Service Promotion.

As a Physician-Scientist, Dr. Hiraike has been especially interested in unmet needs for treating obesity. While white adipocytes generally store energy as lipid, brown adipocytes can dissipate energy as heat and are anticipated as a novel target for treating obesity and diabetes via "enhancing energy dissipation," not by "suppressing energy intake." Dr. Hiraike identified the transcription factor nuclear factor I-A (NFIA) as a critical regulator of brown adipocytes. Also, Dr. Hiraike is working to understand the effect of brown adipocyte activity on obesity, diabetes, and their complications using a large-scale biobank cohort.