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This symposium shines a spotlight on a generation of mid-career Japanese scientists whose seminal contributions to cancer immunology have remained underacknowledged. Organised by Dr Masahiro Ono (Imperial College London) supported by the Centre and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
📆 22 July 2025
📍 Imperial College London, South Kensington, Flowers Building
✍ Contact Dr Masahiro Ono for more information and to register
Prof Taku Okazaki played a central role in the discovery and mechanistic elucidation of the PD-1 immune checkpoint pathway. Between 1999 and 2008, in the lab of Prof Tasuku Honjo in Kyoto, the Nobel Laureate in 2018 for the discovery of PD-1, he led the PD-1 research group and authored the seminal PNAS 2001 paper that first revealed the SHP2-mediated inhibition of TCR signalling by PD-1, which is now recognised as the core mechanism of PD-1-mediated immune suppression. Throughout the 2000s, Prof Okazaki was the lead scientist behind a body of work that laid the foundations for the success of anti–PD-1 immunotherapy and its clinical translation. His role in driving discovery from within the laboratory was indispensable.
Dr Il-mi Okazaki is a pioneering molecular biologist and immunologist who made possible many key discoveries, from AID to LAG3, first in the Honjo lab and later in the Okazaki lab. Her first milestone finding was the discovery of AID’s role in class switch recombination and somatic hypermutation (Okazaki et al, Nature, 2002; Yoshikawa, Okazaki, et al, Science 2002), conducted as part of the AID group in the Honjo lab. These foundational discoveries on AID laid the groundwork for the study of the APOBEC family in cancer genomics.
In 2008, Prof Okazaki and Dr Il-mi Okazaki established their own laboratory at Tokushima University, launching a highly innovative research programme. Notably, Dr Il-mi Okazaki led the groundbreaking screening experiments that identified CIITA as the regulator of LAG3–MHC II interaction (Nat Immunol 2018). Together, they have published a series of high-impact studies, including the dissection of cis PD-L1:CD80 interactions and their therapeutic implications (Science 2019). Since relocating to the University of Tokyo in 2019, they have jointly led a series of influential studies redefining immune regulation. Dr Il-mi Okazaki has continued to lead the laboratory’s projects, driving both experimental design and execution.
Prof Yorifumi Satou has devoted his career to uncovering the pathogenesis of HTLV-1-induced adult T-cell leukaemia, which remains prevalent in his birthplace, Kyushu, Japan. His research began in 2001 at Kyoto University, where he initiated studies on the viral gene HBZ in the Matsuoka lab. From 2011 to 2013, he joined the Bangham lab at Imperial College London as a postdoctoral researcher, focusing on HTLV-1–host T-cell interactions. Since 2013, based at Kumamoto University, Prof Satou has expanded his research to encompass the genomic and epigenetic mechanisms of viral latency. His recent landmark paper (Sugata et al., Nat Microbiology, 2025) identified a unique silencer element in the HTLV-1 genome regulated by Runx1, highlighting a fundamental distinction between HTLV-1 and HIV. His longstanding ties to the UK and contributions to retroviral immunopathology make him a particularly valued participant in this symposium.