Keio Medical Prize awarded to Professor Seiji Ogawa and Professor Ulrich Hartl

Keio University announced on the 18th that it has selected Professor Seiji Ogawa (64) of Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine and Professor Ulrich Hartl (69) of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry as this year's recipients of the Keio Medical Prize, which is given to researchers who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of medicine and life sciences. The two will each receive a prize of 10 million yen.

Dr. Ogawa uses genome analysis to examine genetic information to discover genetic abnormalities related to the development of leukemia, malignant lymphoma, and other diseases. In recent years, he has focused on the fact that the number of cells with mutations increases with age, and has clarified the process by which normal cells become cancerous. The results have led to the classification of cancer, prediction of prognosis, and development of treatments.

Dr. Hartl elucidated the mechanism by which the three-dimensional structures necessary for proteins to function normally are created within cells. They demonstrated that substances called ``molecular chaperones'' regulate this shape, and the results contributed to drug discovery research for neurodegenerative diseases and other diseases.