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Associate Senior Scientist
SHIONOGI & CO., LTD., Japan
Disclosure(s): No financial relationships to disclose
Takao Sanaki, Ph.D. is an associate senior scientist and subgroup leader in the Laboratory for Drug Discovery and Disease Research, SHIONOGI & CO., LTD. He received his B.Sc. in 2009 and M.Sc. in 2011 from Department of Molecular Pharmaceutics, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University. In 2011, He started his career as an analytical scientist at Shionogi and he has been involved in the establishment of analytical methods using LC-MS/MS for drug candidates to evaluate their pharmacokinetics and for bioactive lipid molecules to elucidate pathological mechanisms, he continued this work for 5 years. In 2016, he moved to an infectious diseases group and started viral research using Dengue virus and coronavirus collaborating with Hokkaido University. In 2020, he got his Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Hirofumi Sawa in Hokkaido University. His Ph.D. thesis focused on the identification of novel phospholipid molecules which inhibit dengue virus infection in vitro. Currently, he has focused on COVID-19 drug discovery, and was privileged to be placed in the position of pharmacological leader for clinical virology in clinical trials of S-217622, which is a noncovalent oral SARS-CoV-2 3CL protease inhibitor.