Rate My Professor Kazuki Nagasawa

Kazuki Nagasawa, who completed his undergraduate studies and graduate training at Kyoto Pharmaceutical University, earning a Doctor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, is Professor in the Hygiene Chemistry Division of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the same institution. His distinguished career there began in April 1990 as Research Assistant, advancing through Lecturer (April 2000–December 2005), Assistant Professor (January 2006–March 2007 and April 2007–June 2009 as Associate Professor), and Professor since April 2009. He also held a Visiting Scientist position in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine from September 2004 to August 2005.

Professor Nagasawa's research centers on nutritional neuroscience for developing depression prevention and treatment methods, elucidating astrocytes' role in depression pathogenesis, their functional alterations under oxidative stress, and mechanisms of taste abnormalities associated with depression. His work encompasses zinc transporters in taste cells, ATP receptors, chronic stress effects on taste sensitivity, brain homeostasis, and metabolic changes in animal models. He has authored or co-authored over 87 peer-reviewed papers, including "Effect of PEGylated Liposomalization of Oxaliplatin on the Gut Microbiota in Mice" (Biological & Pharmaceutical Bulletin, 2025), "Doxorubicin-induced sweet taste sensitivity reduction and compensatory receptor expression in mice" (Chemical Senses, 2025), "Sub-chronic and mild social defeat stress exposure to C57BL/6J mice increases visceral fat mass and causes accumulation of cholesterol and bile acids in the liver" (Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 2024), "Alteration of sweet taste receptor expression in circumvallate papillae of mice with decreased sweet taste preference induced by social defeat stress" (The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, 2022), and "Transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 mediates sour taste sensing via type III taste cell differentiation" (Scientific Reports, 2019). As principal investigator, he has received multiple grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, such as the project on basic and pharmacoepidemiological verification of anticancer drugs' depression-inducing risk (2022–2026).