Kyoto University's Mori Wins Lasker Medical Award

Tokyo, Sept. 9 (Jiji Press)--Kyoto University Prof. Kazutoshi Mori, 56, has won this year's prestigious Lasker award for basic medical research, according to the Lasker Foundation of the United States. Mori and Peter Walter of University of California, San Francisco, won the award for their research work on the unfolded protein response, a system in cells that detects harmful misfolded proteins and starts a process to carry out corrective measures. Among major Japanese scientists, Kyoto University Prof. Shinya Yamanaka, the inventor of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, won the 2009 Lasker award for his stem cell-related research. END