The Award Ceremony for the 12th Keio Medical Science Prize was held in the Kitasato Hall of the Shinanomachi Campus on 4 December

The Keio Medical Science Prize is awarded to researchers who have made outstanding and creative achievements in the fields of medical and life sciences, and from whom significant activity can be expected in future. Both Japanese and overseas researchers are eligible for the Prize, which is decided by the Keio University Medical Science Fund. It was first awarded in 1996 to Dr Stanley B. Prusiner, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of prions in BSE (‘mad cow disease’). The seventh Prize (2002) was awarded to Dr.Barry J. Marshall, who established diagnostic techniques and treatment for Helicobacter pylori.

This year, the Prize was won by Dr. Brian J. Druker, Professor of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), for his achievement in developing a molecular-targeted therapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia, and Dr. Hiroaki Mitsuya, Professor of Hematology at Kumamoto University, for his development of anti-AIDS drugs.

At the Award Ceremony, Professor Hideyuki Okano (Chairman of the Keio Medical Science Prize Selection Committee) reported that a large number of researchers had been subjected to rigorous scrutiny by 75 reviewers, both inside and outside Keio University. Yuichiro Anzai, President of Keio University, then conferred the Prize medals and certificates on Dr.Druker and Dr.Mitsuya, before giving a congratulatory address. This was followed by further felicitations from Yasuko Ikenobo, Vice Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, and J. Thomas Schieffer, US Ambassador to Japan. Finally, Dr.Druker and Dr.Mitsuya spoke of their delight at receiving the Prize and their plans for future research activity, bringing the Ceremony to a close.

Following the Ceremony, the prizewinners gave Commemorative Lectures to an enthusiastic audience of about 200 participants, including invited guests, Keio staff and students. Dr.Druker first described how the causes of infectious diseases had been discovered in the 1900s, and how antibiotics and vaccines had made it possible to completely cure and prevent various infectious diseases. He then said that it should always be possible to discover treatments for a disease if we know the cause of the disease. For people who have already contracted a disease, however, time is of the essence, and for this reason we must quickly develop molecular-targeted drugs that focus only on those loci where molecules have broken down. In this way, Dr.Druker suggested, it will become possible to treat cancer, the number one killer in Japan today, in the same way as infectious diseases. Dr.Mitsuya explained that, from the time when AIDS was first reported until the present day, the chances of survival after contracting the disease have risen dramatically as a result of treatment. Moreover, thanks to the combined use of some 20 to 25 antiviral drugs, AIDS is no longer a “deadly disease” in industrialized nations but a chronic infectious disease that is curable. One day, indeed, it will be seen as an easily treatable infectious disease. Dr.Mitsuya saw this Prize as encouragement to continue and further intensify his research in future, and expressed the wish to make further challenges in this field.

＊For further details, including past winners of the Keio Medical Science Prize, please visit the Keio University Medical Science Fund website.