Aikawa, Masanori

Yoshihiro Miwa Associate Chair and Director;
Center for Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular Sciences;
Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

(617) 730-7777

maikawa@bwh.harvard.edu

At the Cardiovascular Division of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Dr. Masanori Aikawa is one of the principal investigators at the Center for Excellence in Vascular Biology and Yoshihiro Miwa Associate Chair and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular Sciences (CICS). He also has the secondary faculty appointment at the Channing Division of Network Medicine at BWH. He holds the academic title of Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

He trained as an internist and cardiologist in Japan and has worked at BWH and HMS since 1995. His research interests include the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and metabolic disorders, macrophage biology, and the pro-inflammatory role of dyslipidemia. Dr. Aikawa’s studies, documented in over 130 articles, received worldwide recognition and spurred over 140 lectureship initiations and awards/honors such as the Special Recognition Award in Vascular Biology from the Council on Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology of the American Heart Association and the Annual Tucker Collins Lectureship
at the HMS Vascular Biology Seminar. He currently is an editorial board member for several major medical journals, including Circulation, Circulation Research, Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, and PLOS ONE. He held an editorial position for the “Journal of America College of Cardiology”: http://content.onlinejacc.org/ for 2005-2014. He is also International Associate Editor for Circulation Journal, an official journal of the Japanese Circulation Society. He has served as a reviewer for federal and foundation grants.

Dr. Aikawa’s ultimate goal is to translate basic research findings into clinical practice through multidisciplinary efforts, involving cell biology, innovative animal models, proteomics, and systems biology. His role as Founding Director of CICS represents this goal, where explorations for new therapeutic targets for cardiometabolic diseases are carried out in transpacific collaboration with the Japanese pharmaceutical company Kowa. While he has established a now model of the academia – industry collaboration, Dr. Aikawa continues his pre-existing research laboratory in the Center for Excellence in Vascular Biology at BWH, primarily supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association, where he studies novel triggering mechanisms of macrophage activation in the contexts of atherosclerosis and metabolic disorders. His primary focus is the role of Notch signaling in cardiometabolic diseases. Ongoing projects have been molecular mechanisms by which the Notch pathway promotes vein graft disease and vascular inflammation in chronic kidney disease.

After his clinical training at Juntendo University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan, Dr. Aikawa began his initial research at the University of Tokyo under the supervision of Dr. Ryozo Nagai. This research led to the cloning of human smooth muscle and non-muscle myosin heavy chain isoforms (SM1, SM2, and SMemb/MHC-B). Using these molecules as markers of differentiation, his studies demonstrated diversity of SMC phenotype in developing human arteries and during progression of atherosclerosis and restenosis. For this work, he received several awards, including the Yagi Award from the Japanese Circulation Society and the Young Investigator Award from the Japan Atherosclerosis Society.

Dr. Aikawa’s earlier studies as Research Fellow at the Peter Libby laboratory in BWH used rabbit models to establish that cholesterol lowering by either diet or statins improves various features typical of so-called “vulnerable” atherosclerotic plaque prone to rupture and clinical complications (e.g., reduction of macrophage accumulation, MMP expression, and tissue factor activity). Through a series of rabbit studies, Drs. Libby and Aikawa tested the “plaque stabilization” hypothesis and established the concept that lipid lowering is an anti-inflammatory therapy, providing molecular bases for the observed beneficial outcomes of statin mega trials. As a faculty member, Dr. Aikawa extended his research interest in the role of macrophages in atherogenesis by testing the hypothesis that MMP-collagenases regulate collagen accumulation. Three studies employed genetically altered mouse strains to establish the first direct in vivo evidence of the role of collagenases in arterial collagen architecture. He also contributed to early studies that establish the feasibility for in vivo molecular imaging of inflammation in atherosclerosis.

Publications