HIDEYUKI OKANO

President,
The Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine

Hideyuki Okano received his M.D. (1983) and Ph.D. of Medical Science (1988) from Keio University. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, he became a Professor at Tsukuba University (1994), Osaka University (1997), and returned to Keio University in 2001. He served as Dean of Keio University School of Medicine/Graduate School of Medicine (2007-2021) and was appointed Visiting Professor at MIT in 2022. He is currently the Director and Distinguished Professor of Keio University Regenerative Medicine Research Center. He was awarded numerous honors like the Medal with Purple Ribbon (2009), the Erwin von Bälz Prize (2014) and Uehara Prize (2022). Currently, he is the president of the Japanese Society for Regenerative Medicine, and is the President Elect of the ISSCR, focusing on stem cell therapies for spinal cord injuries and iPSCs-based modeling and drug development of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer’s disease.