Tasuku Honjo
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About
Japanese physician-scientist and immunologist best known for his identification of programmed cell death protein. He and James. P Allison won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their "discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation." In 2001 he was elected as a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences in the US. In 2003 he became a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina and of the Japan Academy in 2005.
Before Fame
He completed his M.D. degree in 1966 from the Faculty of Medicine at Kyoto University. In 1975 he received his Ph.D. degree in Medical Chemistry from the same institution. In 1971 he relocated to the United States where he worked at the US National Institutes of Health. He returned to Japan to work as a professor at universities in Kyoto, Tokyo and Osaka.
Trivia
He and James P. Allison won the 2014 Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science. Other notable awards include the Imperial Prize, the Koch Prize, the Order of Culture, the Kyoto Prize and the Alpert Prize.
Family Life
His father worked as a surgeon. He has a distinct memory of being carried on the back of his mother during a bombing raid of Toyama City in 1945. He has a daughter, Yasuko and a son, Hajime, with his wife Shigeko.
Associated With
In 2013 he and fellow scientists posed for a photo with World Leader Shinzo Abe at the East Garden of the Imperial Palace.
