Tachi Yamada

Tachi Yamada
Tachi Yamada
	Yamada in 2010
Born	5 June 1945; Tokyo, Japan
Died	4 August 2021 (aged 76); Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Education	Phillips Academy
Alma mater	Stanford University; New York University
Occupations	Physician; gastroenterologist; pharmaceutical executive;

Tadataka "Tachi" Yamada KBE (山田忠孝 Yamada Tadataka or "ターチ Tachi"; 5 June 1945 – 4 August 2021) was a Japanese-born American physician and gastroenterologist. He was a venture partner of Frazier Healthcare Partners.

Early life and education

Born in Tokyo, Yamada had a Japanese American mother

New York University School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine training at the Medical College of Virginia, and then became an investigator in the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases holding the rank of major, U.S. Army Medical Corps. Subsequently, he trained in gastroenterology at the UCLA School of Medicine

and assumed his first faculty position there. He later moved to the University of Michigan where he headed the Gastroenterology Division and ultimately became chairman, Department of Internal Medicine and Physician-in-Chief of the University of Michigan Medical Center before joining GlaxoSmithKline.

A scientist and scholar in gastroenterology, Yamada was the author of more than 150 original manuscripts on the subject and was the editor of The Textbook of Gastroenterology for its first five editions. The studies undertaken by Yamada and his collaborators led to basic discoveries in the post-translational processing and biological activation of peptide hormones, the structure and function of receptors for hormones regulating gastric acid secretion, and the regulation of genes involved in the acid secretory process.

He was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Michigan, University of East Anglia, the University of Warwick, Washington College, and Loyola University of Chicago.

Career

Prior to Frazier Healthcare Partners, Yamada was executive vice-president and a board member of

Takeda Pharmaceuticals

, and served as the chief medical and scientific officer of the company.

Before joining Takeda, Yamada was the president of the global health program at the

Avandia.^[3]

In recognition of his contributions to medicine and science he was elected to membership in the

Academy of Medical Sciences (UK) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

.

Among his many other activities he was a member of the board of directors of public corporations across four continents and was a member of the board of

Clinton Health Access Initiative

.