The First Tomoh Masaki Award (2011)
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Life Sciences 91 (2012) 466–469 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Life Sciences journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/lifescie The First Tomoh Masaki Award (2011) Matthias Barton a,⁎,1, Noriaki Emoto b,c,2,3, Takashi Miyauchi d,⁎,2,3 a Molecular Internal Medicine, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland b Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan c Clinical Pharmacy, Kobe Pharmaceutical University, Kobe, Japan d Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Division of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan abstract Professor Tomoh Masaki, a Japanese physician-scientist born in 1934, is particularly known for the discovery of endothelium-derived peptide endothelin and its receptors, among many other scientific achievements. In recognition of his work, the Tomoh Masaki Award was established in 2011 by the Endothelin International Ad- visory Board of The International Conferences on Endothelin as a biannual scientific prize in recognition of Masaki's innovative and ground-breaking work that has led to new clinical applications. The inaugural Tomoh Masaki Award was presented at The Twelfth International Conference on Endothelin held in Cambridge, UK, to one his former graduate students, Professor Masashi Yanagisawa as the first recipient of this award, who played an instrumental role in the discovery of endothelin at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. The arti- cle summarizes the scientific achievements of Masaki and the awardee, Masashi Yanagisawa, also including personal reflections of two of Masaki's former graduate students on their teacher as well as on the awardee of The First Tomoh Masaki Award 2011 and their work as scientists and their role as mentors. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. The Tomoh Masaki Award who is currently at the University of Texas Southwestern, Dallas, and the University of Tsukuba, Japan. Also presented are personal reflections In early 2011 the Guest Editor proposed to the Endothelin International of two of Professor Masaki's former graduate students at the Universityof Advisory Board to establish a new award in the name of Tomoh Masaki in Tsukuba, Takashi Miyauchi (now Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at recognition of his innovative and ground-breaking research work in the University of Tsukuba), and Noriaki Emoto (now Professor of Cardiovas- field of endothelin science and vascular biology which has led to the cular Medicine at Kobe University and Kobe Pharmaceutical University). development of endothelin receptor antagonists as a new therapeutic principle in medicine. It was agreed to establish The Tomoh Masaki Tomoh Masaki: an extraordinary physician-scientist Award which was to be presented biannually – after a careful selection process – on the occasion of the International Conferences on Endothelin Born in 1934, Tomoh Masaki obtained his M.D. from the Faculty of to individuals for their extraordinary contribution in the field of Medicine of the University of Tokyo in the late 1950s and completed endothelin research in basic or clinical science. The design of the his internship training (Masaki and Sawamura, 2006). In 1963, he hand-crafted award plate depicts the amino acid sequence of the started to work in research at the University of Tokyo with Professor endothelin-1 peptide as well as an artistic impression of Professor Setsuro Ebashi (Fig. 2) as a graduate student to eventually obtain a Tomoh Masaki (Fig. 1). This article summarizes the life and work of Ph.D. degree. His work lead to the discovery of α-actinin and Professor Masaki as a scientist and presents the inaugural recipient of M-protein (Ebashi et al., 1974; Kuroda et al., 1981; Masaki and Takaiti, The First Tomoh Masaki Award (2011), Professor Masashi Yanagisawa 1974), as new proteins involved in muscle structural biology. His re- search also contributed to the identification of discovery of other mus- cular proteins, including different types of myosin and troponin (Otsuki et al., 1967) as well as describing their role in muscle cell differ- ⁎ Correspondence to: M. Barton, Molecular Internal Medicine, University of Zurich, LTK entiation, which also included identification of the gene sequence of Y44 G22, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zürich, Switzerland. Tel.: +41 77 439 5554; fax: +41 44 635 6875, or T. Miyauchi, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Department these muscle proteins (Masaki and Sawamura, 2006; Masaki, 2003). of Internal Medicine, Division of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of In 1975, Masaki was promoted to Professor of Pharmacology at the Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305‐8575, Japan. Tel.: +81 29 853 3210; fax: +81 29 853 3143. Institute of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Tsukuba E-mail addresses: [email protected] (M. Barton), [email protected] (Figs. 3 and 4), where most of ground-breaking work was done that (T. Miyauchi). fi 1 Guest Editor, Endothelin XII. led to the identi cation of endothelin and its ETB receptor in the 2 Guest Associate Editor, Endothelin XII. late 1980s (Inoue et al., 1989; Sakurai et al., 1990; Yanagisawa et al., 3 Chair-Elect, The Thirteenth International Conference on Endothelin, Tokyo 2013. 1988). Professor Masaki moved to the Faculty of Medicine at Kyoto 0024-3205/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lfs.2012.07.017 M. Barton et al. / Life Sciences 91 (2012) 466–469 467 Personal reflections on a teacher and mentor In April of 1986, Takashi Miyauchi joined Masaki's laboratory as a graduate student at the University of Tsukuba. There were two major projects, one on the molecular analysis of myosin chains (Supervisor and Head: Professor Masaki), the other on pharmacological charac- terization of vasoactive peptides (Project Head, Professor Katsutoshi Goto; Supervisor Professor Masaki; Takashi Miyauchi was part of this team). After Professor Masaki's team had completed cloning of smooth muscle myosin heavy chain and sequencing of its cDNA (Yanagisawa et al., 1987), his laboratory began to work on the identi- fication of an endothelium-derived vasoconstricting factor (EDCF) in May 1987 (Masaki, 1998). Only a few months later, Professor Louis Ignarro published a paper (Ignarro et al., 1987) identifying NO as the endothelium-dependent relaxing factor discovered seven years earlier by Furchgott and Zawadzki (1980). In early 1987, the cardiology resident Hiroki Kurihara had presented a paper by Professor Robert Highsmith's group in one of Professor Masaki's journal clubs describing as a novel endothelial cell-derived Fig. 1. The hand-crafted award plate of the Tomoh Masaki Award, showing the amino acid sequence of the endothelin-1 peptide published in 1988 and an impression of Pro- peptidergic vasoconstrictor (Hickey et al., 1985). Graduate student fessor Tomoh Masaki. The award was presented to Professor Masashi Yanagisawa at Masashi Yanagisawa proposed to Professor Masaki to identify this the Twelfth International Conference on Endothelin in Cambridge, United Kingdom peptide as his Ph.D. thesis project (Vane, 1991). Yanagisawa and (Award design by the Guest Editor). Kurihara – supervised by Professor Masaki – started their work in May 1987 (Masaki, 1998, 2004). They were joined in their efforts by the pharmacologist Katsutoshi Goto who supervised and the protein chemist Sadao Kimura, both were from the Faculty of Basic Medical University in 1991, where his work led to the identification of a Sciences of the University of Tsukuba. Because Professor Masaki's receptor for oxidized low-density lipoproteins expressed in vascular laboratory had great experience with cloning, molecular biochemistry, endothelial cells (Masaki and Sawamura, 2006; Sawamura et al., and pharmacology, the works of purification, identification, and 1997). Following his professorship at Kyoto University, Professor sequencing cDNA of the EDCF endothelin was completed within seven Masaki was appointed Director of the Research Institute of the months and a manuscript was sent to Nature in December 1987 National Cardiovascular Center in Osaka in 1997, and President of (Masaki, 1998; Yanagisawa et al., 1988). Professor Masaki, being a med- Osaka Seikei University in 2003. In 2007, Masaki was appointed ical doctor by training, soon developed an interest to study the role of Professor at Tokyo Women's Medical University from where he re- endothelin in pathophysiology and disease and already before publish- tired in 2009. He currently lives in Tokyo, where the Thirteenth ing the report in Nature further proposed to explore the role of International Conference on Endothelin will be held in 2013 celebrating endothelin in animal models and patients with cardiovascular disease, the 25th anniversary of the discovery of endothelin (ET-13 Tokyo). particularly to study changes in endothelin plasma levels. In January of 1990, Noriaki Emoto joined Professor Masaki's laboratory as a graduate student. The first encounter left a great impression on Emoto and was important for his own research and his later life as a scientist. Professor Masaki said: “Dr. Emoto, there are so many papers published in a year” (spreading his arms to indicate the amount of publications) “but there are only a few meaningful theses published every year” (showing a half an inch of a gap with two of his fingers). “Most of them are junk. You should work on what you believe in, that is important. Never engage in a meaningless study and waste your time with that.” Professor Masaki made sure that Emoto could do his research and provided his support. He did not insist to be informed about every- thing, arguing that it did not matter so much what everyone was studying in his laboratory as long as it was unique and interesting. Professor Masaki's attitude towards research is also evident from another episode. In February 1992, Professor Masaki's former gradu- ate student Yanagisawa was about to leave for his new position at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, ac- companied by Emoto, and one day Professor Masaki stopped by the laboratory and said: Fig.