Assistant Professor
Marsico Lung Institute/Cystic Fibrosis Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Dr. Okuda obtained his M.D. degree from Yamagata University in Japan, followed by residency training in internal medicine and fellowship in respiratory medicine. Thereafter, he entered the graduate school of medicine at the University of Tokyo where he learned basic laboratory techniques in molecular biology. In the second year of graduate school, he applied for postdoctoral training in Dr. Richard Boucher’s laboratory at University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill to engage in studies of airway and mucus biology. Under Dr. Boucher’s supervision, he successfully characterized the regional expression patterns of major airway secretory mucins, MUC5AC/MUC5B, and CFTR/ionocytes in normal and CF human airways. Using these studies, he earned his Ph.D. degree in medicine from The University of Tokyo in Japan. Within these works, he developed microdissection techniques for small airway tissue isolation and in vitro small airway epithelial cell cultures to understand small airway specific epithelial cell biology and physiology comparable to large airways, which have been widely utilized in multiple collaborative projects nationwide. After a 2-year period as a research associate, Dr. Okuda was promoted in 2021 to a research assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary Diseases and Critical Care Medicine at UNC at Chapel Hill. Dr. Okuda’s long-term career goal is to work, as a professional investigator, toward a full understanding of the MCC system in the lungs and contribute to the improvement of the prognosis in all patients with muco-obstructive lung diseases, including CF.