INTRODUCTION

Hiroyoshi Nishikawa is now the Chief of the Division of Cancer Immunology, Research Institute / Exploratory Oncology Research and Clinical Trial Center (EPOC), at the National Cancer Center Japan. He is also cross-appointed as Professor and Chairman of Department of Immunology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine. The major focus of his research is clarifying the control mechanism(s) of immune tolerance and immune surveillance focusing on tumor immunity. In addition, he develops novel cancer immunotherapies targeting regulatory T cells. Dr Nishikawa is well recognized world-wide for his contribution in research in immunosuppressive mechanisms in human cancer by means of immunogenomic analyses. He received numerous awards such as Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) Team Science Award, Elected Fellow at American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and more recently, the Commendation for Science and Technology in the research category by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Japan.

Hiroyoshi Nishikawa received his MD degree from School of Medicine, Mie University (Mie, Japan) in 1995 and a Ph.D. degree from the Graduate School of Medicine, Mie University (Mie, Japan) in 2002. He studied the role of immune suppressive mechanisms, particularly regulatory T cells in tumor immunity working in Dr. Lloyd J Old’s lab. at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY) and then in Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi’s lab. at Osaka University (Osaka Japan).