Four Japanese researchers win prestigious Lasker Award

Four Japanese researchers have been selected as recipients of the Lasker Award, a prestigious medical honor often regarded as a precursor to the Nobel Prize. The Lasker Foundation announced the winners on September 9.

In the Basic Medical Research category, Professor Masashi Yanagisawa of the University of Tsukuba shared the award with a professor from Stanford University for his discovery of orexin, a neurotransmitter that regulates sleep and wakefulness.

In the Clinical Medical Research category, three individuals—former Chugai Pharmaceutical senior fellow Arihiro Hattori, along with Takeshi Kitazawa and Tomoyuki Ikawa—were honored for their development of treatments for hemophilia, a disorder characterized by difficulty in blood clotting. The award ceremony is scheduled to take place in New York on September 17.