About the Sasaki Institute

Corporate philosophy

“We contribute to the advancement of medicine and health care through research for patients, along with relevant research support.”

Basic policy

The Sasaki Foundation is the medical research organization consisting of Sasaki Institute, Kyoundo Hospital, and Shonan Medical Examination Center. The three organizations cooperate closely with each other. We are committed to promoting our people’s health. To this end we are conducting the research and development of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer, among other diseases, attempting to advance medicine and human resources, and striving to promote and disseminate better medical care. The Institute carries out basic research, delivering the solutions through the experimental findings while the Hospital and the Medical Examination Center perform clinical research by taking advantage of clinical information. In case experimental results are required for the clinical research, they are given the opportunity for experiments in the Institute.

Non-profit activities

Research on cancer and other diseases
Therapeutic research devoted to the maintenance and improvement of patients’ quality of life
Preventive medical research on cancer and other diseases
Programs to train clinical investigators

Our efforts

We strive to move research forward from a perspective different than others, enhancing our position in the scientific community. Among the four non-profit activities, we are engaged in ’research on cancer and other diseases’ and ‘programs to train clinical investigators.’ We are doing the cancer research to substantiate ‘living with cancer.’ Cancer is a genetic disease. Given that mutations in DNA inevitably occur in our lifetime, it is quite hard to avoid developing cancer. After treatment, the regrowth of remaining cancer cells, cancer stem cells, and metastasized cancer cells all cause a big challenge. The time to cancer recurrence varies from several months to decades. One critical direction is to devise the therapeutic intervention strategies to reconcile with dormant cancer cells for escaping death from cancer by delaying the onset of cancer regrowth as long as possible. As for the diseases other than cancer, diabetes is one of the significant disorders with many unsolved problems, which will also be addressed by the experimental research.

Research organization

The Sasaki Institute is dedicated to the basic medical research on diseases, mainly cancer, with three departments built on distinct research disciplines: genome, interactome, and proteome. Each department is comprised of a principle investigator as chief, two research scientists and one research assistant.

On the operation and management of public research expenditure

The Sasaki Foundation has implemented internal regulations “Regulations for the Handling of Public Research Expenditure” in accordance with the Guidelines for Management and Audit of Public Research Funds at Research Institutions stipulated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology effective as of February 15, 2007 (revised on February 18, 2014) and strived to properly use public research expenditure. In addition, we seek to prevent fraudulent behavior in research by enforcing internal regulations “Regulations for Responding to Misconduct in Research” in accordance with the Guidelines for Responding to Misconduct in Research by the Ministry on August 26, 2013. Conforming to these regulations, a hotline is placed in the Compliance Office of the Foundation Secretariat to receive reports of misconduct in public research expenditure use and research activities, from both internal and external sources. Contact e-mail address: compliance@po.kyoundo.jp

Organization/Member

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Director	Haruhiko Sugimura, M.D., Ph.D.	Researchmap
Vice-Director	Hideki Yamaguchi, Ph.D.

Department of Cancer Genome Research

Chief (Principal Investigator)	Hirofumi Nakaoka, Ph.D.	Researchmap
Research Scientist
Research Assistant	Keiko Nishikawa
Collaborator	Yusuke Kawamura	National Defense Medical College
Collaborator	Kotaro Takahashi	Niigata University School of Medicine

Department of Cancer Cell Research

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Chief (Principal Investigator)	Hideki Yamaguchi, Ph.D.	Researchmap/Google Scholar
Research Scientist	Makoto Miyazaki, Ph.D.	Researchmap/Google Scholar
Research Scientist
Research Assistant	Yuko Nagamura
Collaborator	Ken Iiyama	Tokyo College of Biotechnology
Collaborator	Tomoyo Yamamoto	Nihon University School of Pharmacy
Collaborator	Hinako Fujii	Tokyo College of Biotechnology

Department of Peptidomics

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Chief (Principal Investigator)
Research Scientist	Masao Nakamura, Ph.D.	Researchmap
Research Assistant
Visiting Scientist	Kazuki Sasaki, M.D., Ph.D.	Researchmap

Office

Chief	Michiteru Otani
Staff	Yuko Nagamura

Research equipment

Time-lapse fluorescence microscope system

Historical timeline

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1882	June 1st	Toyo Sasaki founds Kyoundo Hospital here in Kanda Surugadai, Tokyo.
1886		Masakichi Sasaki (the second Director of the Hospital) takes office as the Professor of Tokyo Imperial University Medical College (the first Japanese professor).
1894		Masakichi Sasaki builds a laboratory on his property and starts research on tuberculosis (the precursor of the later Sasaki Institute).
1896		Masakichi Sasaki assumes office as Director of Kyoundo Hospital and founds a tuberculosis sanitarium in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa.
1903	Jan	Taking over from Masakichi and remodeling of the laboratory, Takaoki Sasaki (the third director of the Hospital) got engaged in research.
1913		Takaoki Sasaki takes office as Professor of Kyoto Imperial University College of Medical (Internal Medicine).
1915		Takaoki Sasaki assumes office as Director of Kyoundo Hospital and the Branch Hospital.
1923	Sep	Both the Hospital and Institute are burn down in the Great Kanto Earthquake.
1924	May	The institute resumes research in a temporary building.
	ditto	Takaoki Sasaki is awarded the Imperial Prize of the Japan Academy for “Studies on Bacterial Degradation of Protein and Constituent Amino Acids, and Synthesis of Amino Acids”.
1929		Reconstruction of the Hospital is completed.
1935	Feb	Takaoki Sasaki and Tomizo Yoshida report on rat liver carcinogenesis by an azo dye in Virchow’s Archives.
	ditto	Takaoki Sasaki takes office as Director of Cancer Institute, Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research (concurrently).
1936	June	Takaoki Sasaki and Tomizo Yoshida receive the Imperial Prize for “Experimental Production of Liver Carcinoma by Feeding with o-Amidoazotoluene“.
	ditto	Takaoki Sasaki is recommended as a Member of the German Academy.
1938	May	The full-scale construction of the Institute is completed (at Surugadai 2-2).
1939	Jan	The establishment of the foundation ‘Sasaki Institute’ is approved.
	ditto	Takaoki Sasaki becomes the first President and Director. Takaoki Sasaki is recommended as a Member of the Imperial Academy.
1940	Nov	Takaoki Sasaki is awarded the Order of Culture.
1941	Dec	Takaoki Sasaki donates Kyoundo Hospital to the foundation ‘Sasaki Institute’.
1942		Takaoki Sasaki donates Hiratsuka Branch Hospital to the foundation ‘Sasaki Institute’
1950		The institute initiates the study of in-house established ascites hepatoma.
1951		Takaoki Sasaki is recommended as Person of Culture Merits. (the first person)
1953	Apr	Tomizo Yoshida is inaugurated as the second Director of the Institute.
	Nov	Tomizo Yoshida is awarded the Imperial Prize again for “Pathological Studies on Yoshida Sarcoma”.
1954	Sep	The Institute becomes a designated laboratory of the Japan Scholarship Foundation Law.
1959	Nov	Tomizo Yoshida receives the Order of Culture.
1966	Oct	The 9th International Cancer Congress is held in Tokyo, with Takaoki Sasaki as the honorary President and Tomizo Yoshida (Director of the Institute of that time) as the President. Hirooki Sasaki becomes the second President of the Foundation.
1968	Jan	The institute made an extension to the existing building.
1974	Apr	Hirooki Sasaki becomes the third Director of the institute.
1988		The new hospital building is completed.
1990	June	The chronicle ‘50 Year History of the Sasaki Institute’ is issued.
	Sep	The Institute building is completed. New research begins with three divisions (Departments of Pathology, Biochemistry and Cytogenetics) established.
	ditto	Motomichi Sasaki becomes the fourth Director.
1993		Shonan Medical Center opens.
1995	Oct	Yoshiaki Hashimoto is inaugurated as the fifth Director.
1997	Sep	Yoshiaki Hashimoto wins the Tomizo Yoshida Prize.
2001	Apr	Yuji Kurokawa becomes the third President of the Foundation and also the sixth Director of the Institute, adopting the official name of the Sasaki Institute (affiliated to the Sasaki Foundation).
	Oct	Akihiko Maekawa is inaugurated as the seventh Director of the Institute.
2006	Apr	Yuji Kurokawa is appointed the eighth Director of the Institute (concurrent President of the Foundation).
ditto		Six research departments specialized for clinical research are implemented with respective chiefs and senior researchers appointed (all concurrently working at the Kyoundo Hospital or Shonan Medical Examination Center).
2010	Apr	Takao Sekiya assumes the director position (ninth), newly establishing the Department of Cancer Genetics as the seventh division.
2012	Apr	The Sasaki Foundation is authorized as a public interest incorporated foundation by the Cabinet Office.
2014		A call for donations for cancer research is launched.
2015	Dec	Animal research facilities are reconstructed.
2017	Apr	The institute is reorganized from 7 clinical research divisions to 5 basic research divisions, with Departments of Cancer Genome Research, Molecular Metabolic Regulation Research and Cancer Cell Research established.
2018	Aug	The Department of Peptidomics is established.
2020	Jun	Takashi Sasaki is appointed the tenth Director of the Institute (concurrent President of the Foundation).
2022	May	Haruhiko Sugimura is appointed the eleventh Director of the Institute.