Founder Members
Taku Nakahara Ph.D., MBA
Founder, Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Nakahara began his career as a bioinformatics researcher before launching a biotech startup out of Hokkaido University in 2008, where he was co-founder and Director of Bioinformatics until 2014 in New Jersey, USA. Since then, he has invested in businesses and startups in Japan, working for a major FMCG enterprise and venture capitals in Japan and the US.
In 2020, Dr. Nakahara founded Metagen Therapeutics (MGTx) as CEO, striving to commercialize microbiome medicine and drug discovery seeds from Japanese academia and companies.
Dr. Nakahara currently resides in Sapporo where he also serves as a bio-business advisor for Sapporo City, facilitating activities to support the local bio-innovation ecosystem.
Dai Ishikawa MD, Ph.D.
Founder, Chief Medical Officer
Since 2009, Dr. Ishikawa has been studying immune mechanisms and microbiota-immune relationships at the IBD Center at Case Western Reserve University in the US. In 2014, he began performing Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT) for Ulcerative Colitis (UC). Dr. Ishikawa has been an associate professor with the Faculty of Medicine at Juntendo University, Department of Gastroenterology since 2016.
Dr. Ishikawa has been working on outpatient clinic, clinical research, and research on Inflammatory Bowel Disease, including UC. He is the Principal Investigator of clinical research on FMT and is working to establish a fundamental bacteriological treatment for UC.
Shinji Fukuda, Ph.D.
Founder, Senior Scientific Advisor
Dr. Fukuda specializes in environment control for intestinal microbiota. After receiving his Ph.D. in Agricultural Science, he completed his Special Postdoctoral Researcher in fundamental sciences at RIKEN Research Institute in Japan. From 2012-2019, Dr. Fukuda was specially appointed associate professor at Keio University, Institute for Advanced Biosciences.
In 2015, he established Metabologenomics, Inc. as President and CEO. Most recently in 2020, Dr. Fukuda co-founded Metagen Therapeutics Inc.
Takuji Yamada, Ph.D.
Founder, Senior Scientific Advisor
After Dr. Yamada completed his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics, he worked as a research assistant at Kyoto University, Institute for Chemical Research, and as a researcher at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Germany.
In 2015, he co-founded Metabologenomics, Inc. and served as Executive Vice President and CTO of the company. In 2016, Dr. Yamada became an associate professor at the Institute of Science Tokyo, School of Life Science and Technology. Dr. Yamada co-founded MGTx in 2020.