Shinobu Kitazume is currently a professor in Fukushima Medical University. She received her PhD from the University of Tokyo in 1995, and performed postdoctoral training in the State University of New York at Stony Brook with Dr. William Lennarz, and in the University of Illinois at Chicago with Dr. Karen Colley. Her work over 25 years has concentrated on elucidating how protein glycosylation impacts on human disease, such as cancer, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), glioma and multiple sclerosis. She found a glioma marker glycoprotein in the cerebrospinal fluid. Furthermore, she has recently developed a novel AD model mice with cerebral amyloid angiopathy, that would be useful for studying ARIA. She also uses several glycosyltransferase deficient mice to elucidate the disease mechanism.

Selected publications
1. Nagai K. et al. (2023) Soluble protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type Z(PTPRZ) in cerebrospinal fluid is a potential diagnostic marker for glioma Brain-specific glycosylation enzyme GnT-IX maintains PTPRZ levels, thereby determining glioma growth. J. Biol. Chem. 299, 105128.
2. Tachida Y, et al. (2023) O-GalNAc glycosylation determines intracellular trafficking of APP and Aß production. J. Biol. Chem. in press. 299, 104905.
3. Takahashi K, et al. Brain-specific glycosylation of protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type Z (PTPRZ) marks a demyelination-associated astrocyte subtype. J. Neurochem. 166, 547-559.
4. Imamaki R. et al. (2018) Glycosylation controls cooperative PECAM-VEGFR2-3 integrin functions at the endothelial surface for tumor angiogenesis. Oncogene 37, 4287-4299.
5. Kizuka Y, et al. (2015) An aberrant sugar modification of BACE1 blocks its lysosomal targeting in Alzheimer’s disease. EMBO Mol. Med.15, 175-189.