Creating the first mouse model for atherosclerosis
Medical career
Institutions
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Sub-specialties
Genetics, medical research
Awards
Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) Award of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Nobuyo N. Maeda is a Japanese geneticist and medical researcher, who works on complex human diseases including atherosclerosis, diabetes and high blood pressure, and is particularly known for creating the first mouse model for atherosclerosis. Maeda has worked in the United States since 1978; as of 2017, she is the Robert H. Wagner Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[1]
Early life and education
Maeda was born in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan in the early 1950s, the second of three sisters. Her father was a chemical engineering professor.[2] She attended Tohoku University in Sendai, where she received a BSc in chemistry (1972) and an MSc in bio-organic chemistry (1974), followed by a PhD in the same subject in 1977; her thesis was entitled "Isolation and characterization of neurotoxins from the venoms of sea snakes, and the use of amino acid sequences in taxonomy".[3]
Career and awards
Maeda first briefly worked in the laboratory of Nobuo Tamiya at the Department of Chemistry of Tohoku University. In 1978, she left Japan for the United States, and worked for a decade at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She held post-doctoral positions in the laboratories of Walter M. Fitch (Department of Physiological Chemistry; 1978–81) and Oliver Smithies (Laboratory of Genetics; 1981–83), and then worked in the Laboratory of Genetics as an assistant and then associate scientist.[3]
She moved to the Department of Pathology of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1988, with her collaborator (and later husband) Smithies,[2] where she held successively positions as associate professor (1988) and professor (1996), and was appointed the Robert H. Wagner Distinguished Professor at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in 2003.[3] She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Nutrition (from 2000) and has directed the university's pre-doctoral training program in vascular biology since 2002.[3][4]
Maeda's group subsequently carried out other gene-targeting experiments, including replacing the mouse gene for ApoE with common variants of the human gene.[14] As of 2017, her research continues to focus on atherosclerosis, and encompasses molecular pathology as well as genetics.[1] She also researches other multifactorial diseases, including diabetes and high blood pressure.[2][4]
Personal life
Maeda was married to the British-born geneticist Oliver Smithies (1925–2017).[16]
^ abFatemeh Ramezani Kapourchali; Gangadaran Surendiran; Li Chen; Elisabeth Uitz; Babak Bahadori; Mohammed H. Moghadasian (2014), "Animal models of atherosclerosis", World Journal of Clinical Cases, 2 (5): 126–32, doi:10.12998/wjcc.v2.i5.126, PMC4023305, PMID24868511
^ abStewart C. Whitman (2004), "A practical approach to using mice in atherosclerosis research", The Clinical Biochemist Reviews, 25 (1): 81–93, PMC1853358, PMID18516202