A PhD student received Karl Link Early Career Investigator Award

Tomoki Togashi, a third-year PhD student at Division of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kanazawa University, and JSPS Research Fellow DC2, received the Karl Link Early Career Investigator Award. The reason for the award is that his first author paper entitled "Cure of congenital purpura fulminans via expression of engineered protein C through neonatal genome editing in mice", published in the American Heart Association's international medical journal "Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology" , was recognized as the best study in the field of thrombosis out of around 400 papers published in 2024 ? 

The award was established in 2005 in honor of Dr. Karl Link, renowned for developing warfarin, the world's most widely used anticoagulant. Togashi is the first researcher from Japanese universities.

In the award-winning paper, they succeeded in rescuing the lethality of protein C-deficient mice by expressing the engineered protein C via neonatal genome editing in vivo, suggesting that this may be a novel strategy for curing severe congenital protein C deficiency, for which no treatment has been established yet. The work is the result of collaboration among Professor Tsukasa Ohmori, Department of Biochemistry and Center for Gene Therapy Research, Jichi Medical University, Professor Eriko Morishita, Division of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medical Science, Kanazawa University, and Professor Osamu Nureki, Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo.

Togashi will give a talk in a plenary session at the Vascular Discovery 2025 (April 22-25, Baltimore, USA), where the award ceremony will be held.

 

See below for details.

【Publication】

Journal：Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology

Paper Title：Cure of congenital purpura fulminans via expression of engineered protein C through neonatal genome editing in mice

Authors：Tomoki Togashi, Nemekhbayar Baatartsogt, Yasumitsu Nagao, Yuji Kashiwakura, Morisada Hayakawa, Takafumi Hiramoto, Takayuki Fujiwara, Eriko Morishita, Osamu Nureki, and Tsukasa Ohmori*
(*Corresponding author)

URL：https://doi.org/10.1161/ATVBAHA.123.319460

 

Graphical Abstract
(Togashi T et al, Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, 2024)

 

 

Photo: Mr. Togashi 

 

 

Reference：Click here to read the article in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology?.

Researchers' Information： Tomoki Togashi
　　　　　　Eriko Morishita