Please find below the brief biographies of our International Patient Committee Members. The members have been listed alphabetically in order of their names.
Anita Dimitrova
Anita lives in Sofia, Bulgaria, with her two children: a 15-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son diagnosed with CD. With a robust background in telecommunications engineering spanning over 15 years, Anita has spent the last 7 years as a Business Analyst at IBM.
Himene Asatsuma
Himene lives in Tokyo, Japan. She graduated from nursing school, but her own experiences led her to become a Child Life Specialist and she now works in a café while volunteering and raising awareness of citrin deficiency. She was diagnosed with CD soon after birth and recovered her health through diet and treatment. She is now able to manage her own health. She joined the International Patient Committee to interact and build supportive relationships with other citrin deficiency patients around the world. She aims to use her experience as a patient and family member to be an approachable and reachable person.
Jeffrey Tsao
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, Jeff is father to a daughter with citrin deficiency. Jeff is a scientist-entrepreneur with 20 years of biotech/pharma experience from Flagship Pioneering, Novartis, McKinsey, and Millipore Sigma in new venture creation, R&D, strategy, BD, operations, and commercial. His work has contributed to 3 commercial drugs and several medical imaging technologies.
Jennifer Nakao
Jennifer and her family live in Salt Lake City, Utah. She has a daughter born in 2011 and a son born in 2005 both diagnosed with Citrin Deficiency. Jennifer has over 25 years of accounting and operations experience working with multiple industries and locations. Jennifer is currently the CFO and Managing Director of Administration for the World Trade Center of Utah. Prior to her current position, she worked in public accounting for 13 years and a start-up Intellectual Property law firm.
Manaho Otsuka
Manaho lives with her family in Ibaraki, Japan, and her daughter, born in 2022, has citrin deficiency. Because she has been able to access various information and connect with patients and their families through the Citrin Foundation, Manaho joined the International Patient Committee in the hope that she can help the Foundation’s activities, even if only in a small way. As she has only known the condition for a short period of time, she would like to learn more every day and work on what she wants to achieve for the world based on her own experience.
Seiji Sugimura
Based in Osaka, Japan, Seiji serves as the President of the Japanese patient association group, Citrin Deficiency Patient Association. Since 2008, he has coped with adolescent and adult citrin deficiency (AACD). He is working with members of the patient group to provide information about the condition and to organize family social gatherings. He joined the committee because he believes that working with the Citrin Foundation will advance clinical research and establish a cure for citrin deficiency.
Shirlene Lim
Shirlene is mother to a 6-year-old son who has citrin deficiency and lives with her family in Seattle, Washington. Shirlene has over 20 years of experience in technology. She is currently a Lead Product Manager at Reality Labs and drives the roadmap for Virtual Reality capabilities. Prior to joining Meta, she led strategy and development across consumer and enterprise products at Microsoft and Google.