Ichiro Taniuchi-01

Ichiro Taniuchi

RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences
Japan

Ichiro TANIUCHI received his Ph.D. degrees at Kyushu University (1996), where he studied cellular signaling pathway in lymphocytes. Then he received post-doctoral training at the Dr. Dan Littman’s laboratory at New York University (1996-2002). After he worked as an assistant professor (2002) and associate professor (2004) at Kyushu University, he was appointed to be a team leader for the laboratory of Transcriptional Regulation at RIKEN Research Center for Allergy and Immunology (RCAI) in 2004.
Throughout these periods, Taniuchi has been engaged in basic research in immunology, molecular biology, genetics and developmental biology. One of the most outstanding his achievement was identification of transcription factors that play essential roles in lymphocyte development. His identification of Runx transcription factor family as central factor for CD8+ cytotoxic-lineage T cell differentiation provided insights into transcriptional programming of thymocyte fate decision. After becoming a principle investigator at RIKEN, he extended his study and identified cross regulatory pathway between Runx and ThPOK transcription factors that is central for helper versus cytotoxic lineage choice. Taniuchi has published more than 100 papers and has been invited as a lecturer in international conferences and scientific meetings.