Professor Masashi Yanagisawa has been awarded the 2023 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Known as the "Oscars of Science," the Breakthrough Prize is now in its 11th year and honors the world's leading scientists. Each prize carries an award of US$3 million and is presented in the fields of life sciences, fundamental physics, and mathematics. Laureates attend an awards ceremony designed to celebrate their achievements and to inspire the next generation of scientists, and as part of the ceremony program they also take part in a series of lectures and discussions.
Professor Yanagisawa shares the prize with Professor Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford University for their discovery that narcolepsy, a disorder of excessive sleepiness, is caused by the loss of a small population of brain cells that produce a wake-promoting substance — a finding that has opened the way to new treatments for sleep disorders.
For more information:
https://wpi-iiis.tsukuba.ac.jp/news/1916/
https://breakthroughprize.org/News/73
