Associate Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
https://profiles.stanford.edu/gen-shinozaki
Dr. Gen Shinozaki earned his MD degree from the University of Yamanashi, Japan. He has a Master’s degree in quantum optics from the University of Tokyo and in bioinformatics from the University of Iowa. He completed his psychiatry residency and consultation-liaison psychiatry fellowship both at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN. Prior to joining Stanford, he was a faculty at the University of Iowa where he received K23 as well as R01 awards from NIH.
Dr. Gen Shinozaki’s research interests include investigation epigenetics mechanism of delirium pathophysiology, neuroinflammation and aging using human and mouse samples. Dr. Shinozaki’s group aims to develop epigenetic biomarkers for delirium to predict, detect and monitor illness course, treatment response and patient outcomes. They are also working on a small point-of-care EEG device to detect delirium and predict patient outcome.
SAGE Project: Epigenetic investigation of delirium
Delirium among older adult patients, especially with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other dementia, is associated with long-term cognitive decline (LTCD) and high mortality.
It is dangerous and common after surgery, yet it is underdiagnosed and undertreated. Delirium also exposes older adult patients to a greater risk of developing AD, and AD patients are more likely to develop delirium. Given this connection and potential cause for disease, it is critically important to predict which patients are at risk for delirium and to develop cognitive decline and to lead to ADRD. The goal of this project is to identify epigenetic markers that are predictive of postoperative delirium (POD) in whole blood and monocytes obtained from patients prior to surgery in order to better understand the basis of this condition so that it can be detected earlier and treated promptly.
