Dr. N. Hirokawa is now a distinguished project professor in University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Medicine. He is also serving as the presidents of Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) and International Federation for Cell Biology. He has been an elected associate member of EMBO (2003) and an elected member of Japan Academy (2004).
The intracellular transport is fundamental for cellular functions, morphogenesis and survival in general including neurons composed of a very long axon and dendrites.
Dr. Hirokawa discovered most of the kinesin superfamily motor proteins ,KIFs: 45 genes in mammals (mouse and human), elucidated their molecular structures and functional roles and successfully disclosed the mechanism of intracellular transport including 1) identification of KIFs and their own cargos, 2) mechanism of recognition, binding, and unloading cargos, and 3) mechanisms of directional transport and motility.
Furthermore, using molecular genetics he successfully uncovered that KIFs play significant roles for fundamental physiological phenomena in life such as regulation of brain wiring, learning and memory, activity dependent neuronal survival, enteric neuronal development, left/right determination of our body and suppression of tumorigenesis. He further clarified that deletion of KIFs causes certain diseases such as neuropathy, learning/memory disturbance, epilepsy, elevated anxiety, hydrocephalus, female infertility, tumors and megacolon.
He has published 232 high quality papers in top journals; 17 in Cell, 9 in Nature, 8 in Science, 58 in JCB, 10 in Neuron, 7 in EMBO J and 8 in PNAS. For his achievements, Dr. Hirokawa has received numerous awards including the highest prize from the Japanese Society for Medical Sciences (1991), the Asahi prize (1996), the Japan Academy prize (1999) and Eduard Buchner prize (2005). He has been also invited to the editorial boards of high impact journals such as Cell, Science, Neuron, Dev Cell, JCB, and EMBO J.