2 Japanese Honored as Citation Laureates for Nobel Prize-Level Research

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:08 JST, September 26, 2025

Japanese scientists have been named as two of this year’s Citation Laureates, a Britain-based information research company announced Thursday. The award is given to people whose papers have garnered significant attention and achieved Nobel Prize-level accomplishments.

Clarivate announced 22 Citation Laureates, including Kenji Kangawa, 77, former director general of the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center Research Institute, and Masayasu Kojima, 66, professor emeritus at Kurume University. They were awarded in the category of Physiology or Medicine.

The two discovered the hormone “ghrelin,” which regulates appetite, when working at the center in 1999. Ghrelin is primarily secreted from the stomach into the bloodstream when the stomach is empty and acts on the brain to stimulate eating. Their findings led to the development of drugs for treating “cancer cachexia,” a condition causing rapid weight loss in patients with advanced cancer.

Since 2002, 83 of the 465 Citation Laureates have gone on to win Nobel Prizes.