WPI-IIIS Director/Professor Masashi Yanagisawa has been awarded the 2026 Lasker Award

New York, September 9, 2026—The Lasker Foundation (NY, USA) has announced that the 2026 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award honors two scientists, Masashi Yanagisawa (WPI-IIIS director/Professor, University of Tsukuba) and Emmanuel Mignot (Craig Reynolds Professor of Sleep Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, CA, USA), for "identification of orexin, a brain peptide that maintains wakefulness, and the discovery that orexin deficiency causes uncontrolled sleep in narcolepsy—revealing a key insight into the nature of sleep".

Prof. Yanagisawa discovered a pair of neuropeptides "orexin" in the brain as a new molecule that activates orphan brain receptor. Two type of orexin receptors, OX1 and OX2, were also identified and shown with the exclusive expressions in the brain (Sakurai et al., Cell 1998). Surprisingly, mice bred to lack orexin peptides showed fragmented wakefulness and sudden muscle atonia during active phase, that resemble human narcolepsy (Chemelli et al., Cell 1999). Meanwhile, Prof. Mignot took a different path, studying inherited narcolepsy in dogs, and found the genetic mutations in canine OX2 receptor (Lin et al., Cell 1999). Mignot further found that most human patients with narcolepsy had nearly undetectable level of orexin in the brain, due to the loss of orexin neurons by an autoimmune reaction.

Narcolepsy is a central disorder of hypersomnolence characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, REM sleep abnormalities and sudden sleep attacks, affecting 1 in 2,000 - 3,000 people worldwide. Their work advanced not only the molecular understanding of sleep-wake control, but also pharmaceutical developments, such as orexin receptor antagonists for treatment of insomnia and orexin receptor agonists for people with narcolepsy.

Established in 1945, the Lasker Awards are now widely regarded as America's preeminent biomedical research prize. Prof. Yanagisawa is among a select group of Japanese Lasker laureates, after Profs. Kazutoshi Mori (awarded in 2014), Shinya Yamanaka (2009), Akira Endo (2008), Yoshio Masui (1998), Yasutomi Nishizuka (1989), Susumu Tonegawa (1987) and Hidesaburo Hanafusa (1982).

"I am tremendously honored to receive the 2026 Lasker Award, and particularly delighted to see the prestigious recognition given to the field of sleep science, which historically has received relatively little recognition from major academic awards,"

says Prof. Yanagisawa.

The awards ceremony will be held at the Pierre New York on Thursday, September 17, 2026.