Tasuku Honjo

Tasuku Honjo
Tasuku Honjo
本庶佑
	Honjo in 2013
Born	27 January 1942 (age 82); Kyoto, Japan
Nationality	Japanese
Education	Kyoto University (BS, MD, PhD)
Known for	Class switch recombination; IL-4, IL-5, AID; Cancer immunotherapy; PD-1;
Awards	Imperial Prize (1996); Koch Prize (2012); Order of Culture (2013); Tang Prize (2014); Kyoto Prize (2016); Alpert Prize (2017); Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2018);
	Scientific career
Fields	Molecular Immunology
Institutions	Kyoto University
Doctoral advisor	Yasutomi Nishizuka; Osamu Hayaishi;
Notable students	Shizuo Akira

Tasuku Honjo (本庶佑, Honjo Tasuku, born January 27, 1942)^[2] is a Japanese physician-scientist and immunologist. He won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and is best known for his identification of programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1).^[3] He is also known for his molecular identification of cytokines: IL-4 and IL-5,^[4] as well as the discovery of activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) that is essential for class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation.^[5]

He was elected as a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (2001), as a member of German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (2003), and also as a member of the Japan Academy (2005).

In 2018, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with James P. Allison.^[6] He and Allison together had won the 2014 Tang Prize in Biopharmaceutical Science for the same achievement.^[7]