Two Japanese professors will be awarded the 2015 Canada Gairdner International Awards, an esteemed medical research prize considered to be a good predictor of future Nobel Prize winners, the Gairdner Foundation said Wednesday.
The two are Yoshinori Osumi, a 70-year-old honorary professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and Shimon Sakaguchi, a 64-year-old professor at Osaka University.
According to the foundation, Osumi was "the first person to visually observe the function of autophagy (self-eating), whereby cells clean up the garbage within them by killing invaders and keeping healthy cells."
"Autophagy is now regarded as a vital cell-recycling system and may aid in future developments to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, cancer and other age-related diseases," it said.
As for Sakaguchi, the foundation hailed his discovery of "regulatory T cells" that play a part in the immune system.
Sakaguchi discovered regulatory T cells that act as a "'self-check' to prevent excessive immune reactions as without Treg cells the body would attack the healthy cells and die. He was the first to determine their molecular basis and function," the foundation said.
Treg cells "suppress the immune system against cancer and there are now several clinical trials in the area," it said.
The foundation will hold the prize-giving ceremony in October in Toronto. Each winner will receive 100,000 Canadian dollars, or about ¥9.6 million.