# Tasuku Honjo

Source: https://onco.cc/people/tasuku-honjo/  
OnCo record `tasuku-honjo` (Person). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

He discovered the PD-1 molecule on T cells in 1992 and showed it acts as a brake on immune attack. Blocking it produced nivolumab and pembrolizumab, now used across dozens of cancers; Nobel Prize 2018.

## Summary

Tasuku Honjo, at Kyoto University, identified programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) in 1992 as a gene switched on in dying T cells and, over the following decade, showed with knockout mice that it restrains immune responses and that its blockade lets T cells attack tumours. He worked with Ono Pharmaceutical, later joined by Medarex and Bristol-Myers Squibb, to develop an antibody against it; nivolumab was approved in Japan in July 2014 for melanoma and in the United States in December 2014, and with pembrolizumab established PD-1 blockade as the most widely used cancer immunotherapy, in lung, kidney, bladder, head and neck, Hodgkin lymphoma and many other cancers. He shared the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with James Allison for the discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immune regulation, and his earlier work identified activation-induced cytidine deaminase, central to antibody class switching.

## Fields

- Kind: Person
- Last checked: 2026-09-09
- Tags: hero; pioneer
- Role: Immunologist who discovered PD-1 and opened the way to anti-PD-1 therapy
- Specialisms: Immunology; PD-1; Checkpoint immunotherapy

## Sources

- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasuku_Honjo
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasuku_Honjo
- Nobel Prize biography: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2018/honjo/facts/

## Connected records

- cancers: [Melanoma](https://onco.cc/cancers/melanoma/), [Non-small-cell lung cancer](https://onco.cc/cancers/nsclc/)
- fronts: [Immunotherapy](https://onco.cc/fronts/immunotherapy/)
- technologies: [Immune checkpoint inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/)
- targets: [PD-1](https://onco.cc/targets/pd1/), [PD-L1](https://onco.cc/targets/pdl1/)
- drugs: [Nivolumab](https://onco.cc/drugs/nivolumab/), [Pembrolizumab](https://onco.cc/drugs/pembrolizumab/)
- institutions: [Kyoto University Hospital](https://onco.cc/institutions/kyoto-university-hospital/)
- people: [James P. Allison](https://onco.cc/people/james-allison/)
- bottlenecks: [No one can predict who responds to immunotherapy](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-immunotherapy-response/)
- terms: [Immune surveillance and cancer immunoediting](https://onco.cc/terms/immune-surveillance-immunoediting/)

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