Akihiko Kato is a Professor at the Blood Purification Unit, Hamamatsu University Hospital, Japan. He graduated from Hamamatsu University of Medicine in 1985, and obtained his PhD in 1993. He subsequently worked at the Renal Division, Emory University (Atlanta, GA, USA) as a research fellow under Prof. William E. Mitch and Prof. Jeff M. Sands from 1995 to 1997. He also worked as Director of the Renal, Endocrine and Metabolism Division, Shizuoka Cancer Center Hospital from 2002 to 2005. He then transferred to Hamamatsu University Hospital as an Associate Professor, and has served there as a Professor since 2012. Chiefly interested in nutritional and metabolic disorders in acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD), he has published many experimental and clinical works in these areas. In Japan, he is also an opinion leader on sarcopenia and frailty in CKD.
Eiichiro Kanda, MD, PhD, MPH is a Professor of Medical Science at Kawasaki Medical School, Japan. He graduated from the School of Medicine, Tokyo Medical and Dental University in 1997, and obtained his PhD in 2003. He then pursued studies at the Department of Epidemiology, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University. Working with Prof. William McClellan, he obtained his MPH in 2010. In 2013, he began serving as a Clinical Professor at Tokyo Medical and Dental University, and he has been a Professor at Kawasaki Medical School since 2018. One of his main research interests is in clinical studies, especially on nutritional risk factors in CKD and dialysis patients, and on developing risk prediction scores for dialysis patients.
Yoshihiko Kanno, MD, PhD, FACP graduated from Keio University School of Medicine, Japan in 1991, and subsequently completed a nephrology fellowship at Keio University Hospital. He visited George Washington University (under Dr. Paul L. Kimmel) and the National Institute of Health (under Dr. Jeffrey B Kopp) to research viral infection nephropathy from 1996 to 1998. After returning to Japan, he served as a clinical and research associate at Saitama Medical University from 1999, Associate Professor at Keio University School of Medicine from 2010, and Professor at the Department of Nephrology, Tokyo Medical University from 2013.
