The 12th CiRA Award Ceremony was held on Monday, January 6, 2025. This award, established in accordance with Kyoto University regulations and funded by the iPS Cell Research Fund, recognizes the outstanding achievements in education and research, administration and management of the institute, as well as social contributions and other activities by CiRA faculty members.

Professor Kenji Osafune (Dept. of Cell Growth and Differentiation), Associate Professor Yoshinori Yoshida (Dept. of Cell Growth and Differentiation) and Junior Associate Professor Taro Toyoda (Dept. of Life Science Frontiers) were the recipients of the honor this fiscal year.

(From left) Kenji Osafune, Jun Takahashi, Yoshinori Yoshida and
Taro Toyoda at the CiRA Award ceremony

Osafune successfully established a pathological model of polycystic kidney disease, a challenging and intractable condition, using iPS cell-derived renal collecting duct organoids. Furthermore, by utilizing this model, he identified a retinoic acid receptor agonist as a potential drug candidate for suppressing cyst formation. His team's outstanding achievements and contributions to the company-initiated phase II clinical trial for autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease patients at Kyoto University Hospital and other institutions were highly commended.

Yoshida is leading a project to establish a start-up company based on two core pillars: conducting contract services for functional and toxicity evaluation of newly developed drugs on the heart and developing new therapeutic drugs for heart disease, utilizing the three-dimensional mature cardiac tissue derived from human iPS cells that he independently developed. This project was selected for the "University-Based New Industry Creation Fund Project" by the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The award recognizes his outstanding contributions to the establishment of this large-scale project.

Toyoda was recognized for his remarkable achievements, including the development of iPS cell-derived pancreatic islet cells utilizing the iPS cell stock provided by the CiRA Foundation, and his significant contributions to the realization of an investigator-initiated clinical trial for patients with type 1 diabetes.

Prior to the award ceremony, a New Year's greeting event was held, during which Director Jun Takahashi delivered an address. Mentioning that CiRA will celebrate its 15th anniversary this April, he stated we needed to rejuvenate our faculty and increase the representation of female researchers. He also called on everyone to let us reaffirm our dedication to advancing both basic research and clinical applications—the "R (Research)" and "A (Application)" in CiRA.