Advisor/Consultant: Abbott; Amgen; Astellas; AstraZeneca; Bristol-Myers Squibb; HemoCue; Johnson & Johnson; Merck Sharp & Dohme; Novartis; Reata; Takeda; Vitae Toshiro Fujita, MD, is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine and Chief of the Depart- ment of Nephrology and Endocrinology at the University of Tokyo. He qualified in medicine in 1972 at the Keio University School of Medicine, Japan and remained in Keio until 1976, during which time he completed his medical internship and residency. Between 1976 and 1978, he was a Research and Clinical Fellow at National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, USA. Upon his return to Japan, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine, firstly at the University of Tsukuba and later at the University of Tokyo School of Medicine. Since 1995, Professor Fujita has been Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Graduate School of Medicine and Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, and is Chief of the Department of Nephrology and Endocrinology at the University of Tokyo Hospital. In 1980, Fujita and Bartter at NIH demonstrated the pathophysiology of salt-sensitive hypertension (Am J Med 1980). Since then, he has been continuing research on renal and metabolic aspects of hypertension. His research interests include nephrology, endocrinology, metabolic science and cardioangiology. Dr Fujita s group has reported the involve- ment of aldosterone/mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) activa- tion in salt-sensitive hypertension and metabolic syndrome. Recently, they found an alternative pathway of MR activation: modification of MR function by Rac1 GTPase (Nat Med 2008). Most recently, his group clarified the involvement of aberrant renal b adrenergic receptor-WNK4 pathway in salt- induced hypertension (Nat Med 2011). 