Education
- 1960-1962: Premedical Course, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University
- 1962-1966: Medical Course, Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University (Acquired M.D. in 1966)
- 1966-1967: Internship, Kyoto University Hospital
- 1967-1971: Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University
- 1975: Acquired Ph.D. at Kyoto University
Professional Experiences
- 2015: President, Foundation for Biomedical Research and Innovation at Kobe (current Kobe Biomedical Innovation Center (KBIC))
- 2017~: Distinguished Professor, Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study
- 2017~: Advisor, Shizuoka Prefectural University Corporation
- 2020~: Director, Center for Cancer Immunotherapy and Immunobiology (CCII), Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University
Research Focus
I am known for my discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID), an enzyme that is essential for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation of the immunoglobulin genes. The research into the B cell biology began with identification of excised DNA pieces on DNA in IgG or IgA expressing B cells, which helped establishing the basic conceptual framework for the class switch recombination. We identified a series of key molecules involved in immune regulation, including IL-4, IL-5, SDF-1, and IL-2R α chain.
We made significant contribution also to the developmental biology by identification of RBP-J as the Notch signalling target.
I discovered PD-1 (Programmed cell Death 1), a negative co-receptor expressed on activated T cells and controlling the effector phase of immune responses. Our research demonstrated that PD-1 inhibition enhanced anti-tumor responses, leading me to propose its application for the treatment of cancers.
Honors & Awards (selection)
- 1996: The Imperial Prize and the Japan Academy Prize
- 2000: Award “Person of Cultural Merit” by the Japanese Government
- 2001 Foreign Associate of U.S. National Academy of Science
- 2003: Member of Leopoldina (The German Academy of Natural Scientists)
- 2012: Robert Koch Prize
- 2013: Order of Culture, Japan
- 2014: Tang Prize, Biopharmaceutical Science Award
- 2016: Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate, Physiology or Medicine
- 2016: Kyoto Prize
- 2016: The Keio Medical Science Prize
- 2016: Fudan-Zhongzhi Science Award in Biomedicine
- 2018: JMA Supreme Award of Merit
- 2018: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- 2019: Fellow of the AACR Academy in 2019
- 2019: Academician of Honor of the Spanish Royal Academy of Medicine
- 2019: Honorary Member of The Physiological Society
- 2022: Honorary Academician of Academia Sinica, 2022
Memberships (selection)
- Honorary Member, Japanese Society for Immunology (President 1999-2000)
- Honorary Member, the Japanese Biomedical Society
- Congress of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (President in 2006)
- Honorary Member, Japanese Society of Interferon & Cytokine Research
- The Japanese Association of Medical Sciences (Vice-President of the 29th General Assembly of the Japanese Association of Medical Sciences)
- Japanese Honorary Member, Japanese Cancer Association
- Honorary Member, The Pharmaceutical Society of Japan
Selected Publications
Hayashi H, Chamoto K (Co-corresponding author), Hatae R, Kurosaki T, Togashi Y, Fukuoka K, Goto M, Chiba Y, Tomida S, Ota T, Haratani K, Takahama T, Tanizaki J, Yoshida T, Iwasa T, Tanaka K, Takeda M, Hirano T, Yoshida H, Ozasa H, Sakamori Y, Sakai K, Higuchi K, Uga H, Suminaka C, Hirai T, Nishio K, Nakagawa K, Honjo T. Soluble immune checkpoint factors reflect exhaustion of antitumor immunity and response to PD-1 blockade. (2024) J Clin Invest. 134(7):e168318. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI168318
Kenji Chamoto, Ryusuke Hatae, Tasuku Honjo. Current issues and perspectives in PD‐1 blockade cancer immunotherapy. International Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2020 Jan 3, DOI: 10.1007/s10147-019-01588-7
Ryusuke Hatae, Kenji Chamoto, Young Hak Kim, Kazuhiro Sonomura, Kei Taneishi, Shuji Kawaguchi, Hironori Yoshida, Hiroaki Ozasa, Yuichi Sakamori, Maryam Akrami, Sidonia Fagarasan, Izuru Masuda, Yasushi Okuno, Fumihiko Matsuda, Toyohiro Hirai, Tasuku Honjo. Combination of host immune metabolic biomarkers for the PD-1 blockade cancer immunotherapy. JCI Insight. 2020; 5(2):e133501. DOI: 10.1172/jci.insight.133501
Alok Kumar, Kenji Chamoto, Partha S Chowdhury, Tasuku Honjo, Kumar et al. Tumors attenuating the mitochondrial activity in T cells escape from PD-1 blockade therapy. eLife 2020; 9:e52330. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.52330
Yin, Z., Kobayashi, M., Hu, W., Higashi, K., Begum, N.A., Kurokawa, K., Honjo, T. RNA-binding motifs of hnRNP K are critical for induction of antibody diversification by activation-induced cytidine deaminase. PNAS May 26, 2020 117 (21) 11624-11635 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1921115117
Afzal Husain, Jiangliang Xu, Hodaka Fujii, Mikiyo Nakata, Maki Kobayashi, Ji-Yang Wang, Tasuku Honjo, Nasim A Begum. SAMHD1-mediated dNTP degradation is required for efficient DNA repair during antibody class switch recombination. The EMBO Journal e102931 2020, DOI: 10.15252/embj.2019102931
Maryam Akrami, Rosemary Menzies, Kenji Chamoto, Michio Miyajima, Ryuji Suzuki, Hiroyuki Sato, Akiko Nishii, Michio Tomura, Sidonia Fagarasan, Tasuku Honjo. Circulation of gut-preactivated naïve CD8+ T cells enhances antitumor immunity in B cell-defective mice. PNAS September 22, 2020 117 (38) 23674-23683, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2010981117
Matin Dokht Ashoori, Kensuke Suzuki, Yosuke Tokumaru, Naoko Ikuta, Masaki Tajima, Tasuku Honjo and Akio Ohta. Inactivation of the PD-1-Dependent Immunoregulation in Mice Exacerbates Contact Hypersensitivity. Resembling Immune-Related Adverse Events. Front. Immunol., 27 January 2021, DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.618711