On September 17, 2026, the Lasker Award ceremony was held at a hotel in New York City, and Professor Masashi Yanagisawa, Director of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine at the University of Tsukuba, was awarded the "Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award." The award recognized his research on the discovery of orexin and the development of hypersomnia and narcolepsy due to its deficiency, and he received the award jointly with Professor Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford University.
The Lasker Award is the highest honor in American medicine and is known worldwide as the second most prestigious award after the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Shinya Yamanaka, the 2009 recipient and Nobel laureate in 2012 (and Chairman of the Kyoto University iPS Cell Research Foundation), serves on the foundation's board of directors.
In his acceptance speech, Professor Yanagisawa stated, "Our orexin research began as exploratory basic science, without setting specific targets or pre-determining conclusions. My collaborator, Clif Saper, wrote in an article he contributed to JCI upon receiving the award: 'This kind of basic science is currently in crisis. However, it has repeatedly paved the way for extremely important paths that lead to the treatment of patients.' I would like to take this invaluable lesson to heart."
In this year's Lasker Awards, three individuals from Chugai Pharmaceutical jointly received the "Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award" in recognition of their development of a treatment for hemophilia A. Among them, Takeshi Kitazawa, Deputy Director of Research at Chugai Pharmaceutical, completed his doctoral studies at the University of Tsukuba Graduate School while still employed at the company, and shared the joy at the award ceremony.
reference:[University of Tsukuba] Lasker Award Ceremony: Professor Yanagisawa receives the Basic Medical Research Award
[Chugai Pharmaceutical] Three researchers from Chugai Pharmaceutical, who created the hemophilia A treatment drug Hemlibra, have been awarded the prestigious Lasker Award, a globally recognized American science prize. Their invention of bispecific antibodies, which revolutionized treatment through unique ideas, has been recognized.
