Debiopharm honors Japanese researchers

Switzerland-based Debiopharm, a global biopharmaceutical development specialist that focuses on serious medical conditions and particularly oncology, presented Hidenori Ichijo and Hiroyuki Mano with the 2008 Japanese Cancer Association-Mauvernay Award for their outstanding basic and applied research work in oncology at the JCA conference in Japan.

The basic research of Prof Ichijo, from the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Tokyo, focuses on "stress signalling and cancer" and more specifically on the discovery of a protein tyrosine kinase called the apoptosis signal-regulating kinase 1. ASK1 controls cellular responses to stress and therefore plays a key role in cancer, innate immunity and wound-induced inflammation.

The research work conducted by Prof Mano, from the Functional Genomics Division at Jichi Medical University, focuses on the "discovery of a novel fusion oncogene, echinoderm microtubule associated protein like 4 - anaplastic lymphoma kinase present in lung cancer and its clinical implications." EML4-ALK is a fusion protein resulting from a chromosomal translocation present in a relatively large percentage of non-small cell lung cancers.