Akiko Yanagiya, PhD

Team Leader at Arcalis

Speaker

Dr. Akiko Yanagiya currently serves as a team leader in business development at ARCALIS, Inc., in which she is in charge of designing mRNA and saRNA by optimizing nucleotide sequences at the CDS and 5’/3’ UTRs for efficient target protein expression. She earned a Ph.D. of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo, in which she was engaged in studies about pathogenesis and vaccine applications of RNA viruses such as poliovirus and hepatitis C viruses. She previously served as a scientist in the department of Biochemistry at McGill University from 2003 to 2017, in which she had published many peer reviewed publications about mRNA translation initiation and physiological consequences of mRNA translational control in eukaryotes. Her expertise covers a wide range of RNA biology such as mRNA vaccine and RNA editing as well as mRNA/saRNA manufacturing and quality controls. She is passionate about her work to improve mRNA therapeutics, which must be a potential modality to cure a variety of diseases such as infectious diseases and cancer by adopting innovative RNA technologies.