We Are Tomodachi Autumn 2017

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28Series: Japanese Individuals Contributing WorldwideAutophagy Research Opens New Medical FrontiersIn 2016, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi of the Tokyo Institute of Technology for elucidating the mechanisms underlying autophagy. Autophagy (a term originating from the Greek words auto-, meaning “self,” and phagein, meaning “to eat”) is a vital function in which intracellular protein is broken down to be reused for generating the amino acids needed to sustain life. This function is also known as the “intracellular recycling system.”Dr. Ohsumi was the world’s first to observe the autophagy process through an optical microscope in 1988. The professor was studying yeast cells, which are commonly used in cell research, and was focused on a particular organelle—the vacuole. He was working to elucidate the mechanism of its degradative function in yeasts, a function that was not clear at the time. As a result, he confirmed that cytoplasmic components such as proteins are taken in by the vacuole. Dr. Ohsumi recalls, “It was an awe-inspiring sight that I could have kept watching for hours. At that point, I didn’t grasp the full significance of what I was watching, but I knew I’d made a very important discovery. For me, that was the breakthrough moment that I would look back on whenever I felt discouraged by not yet being able to see the true nature of what I was studying.”Dr. Ohsumi was driven by the desire to know more about the phenomena that he had observed. Using instruments such as an electron microscope, he observed the detailed process in which intracellular protein was taken in by a vacuole for degradation into amino acids and Dr. Yoshinori OhsumiBorn in Fukuoka, Japan in 1945. Graduated in 1967 from the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tokyo, where he then earned a Doctor of Science degree in 1974. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Rockefeller University in the U.S., he became a Research Associate and then a Lecturer at the University of Tokyo. Promoted to Associate Professor of the university in 1988. Appointed as a Professor at the National Institute for Basic Biology in Okazaki City in 1996. Became a Specially-Appointed Professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2009, and has been an Honorary Professor at the same institution since 2014. In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.