Hiroyuki Okazaki
Pharmacologist at Daiichi University of Pharmacy in Fukuoka who studies how the body clock sets the daily rhythm of mTOR in tumours and how to time cancer drugs to match it
Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Daiichi University of Pharmacy (2026) · Lecturer (2020–2024) and Assistant Professor (2015–2019) at the same faculty · Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyushu University, with Shigehiro Ohdo (to 2013)
Hiroyuki Okazaki is first author of a 2013 study from Shigehiro Ohdo's chronopharmacology group at Kyushu University (OKA2013). Chronopharmacology asks whether the time of day a drug is given changes what it does. In mice carrying kidney tumours, the amount of mTOR protein and its active, phosphorylated form rose and fell over 24 hours. The circadian clock set this rhythm through Fbxw7, an enzyme that tags mTOR for destruction. When the mTOR blocker everolimus was given at the time of day when mTOR was high, the mice survived longer than with the same dose at other times. The result is in mice; it has not been tested as a dosing schedule in people.
Okazaki's earlier papers with the Ohdo group (from 2010) also deal with daily rhythms in tumours and the brain, for example a clock-driven rhythm in the transferrin receptor that brings iron into colon cancer cells, and clock disruption in a mouse model of Parkinson's disease. From about 2015 Okazaki's papers list the Department of Molecular Biology at Daiichi University of Pharmacy in Fukuoka, still working with Kyushu colleagues on clock-timed drug delivery.
Japan's national research database lists Okazaki as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Daiichi University in 2026, after posts there as assistant professor and lecturer. Okazaki's grants continue the same theme: using mTOR and the clock to design cancer chronotherapy, timing pain treatment to daily rhythms, and testing Kampo herbal medicines on mTOR in cancer cells.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | A | Circadian regulation of mTOR by the ubiquitin pathway in renal cell carcinoma OKA2013 First author: showed in tumour-bearing mice that the clock drives a 24-hour mTOR rhythm through Fbxw7 and that dosing everolimus at the mTOR peak improved survival. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Hiroyuki Okazaki.
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- Shigehiro Ohdo Works on the body clock and drug timing (chronopharmacology), including how circadian rhythms control mTOR in cancer cells.
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