Nobel Laureate Susumu Tonegawa, Who Unraveled Antibody Mystery, Passes Away

(Central News Agency, Tokyo, 16th - Comprehensive foreign news report) Susumu Tonegawa, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, became the first Japanese to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1987 for elucidating the mechanism of immune antibodies. He passed away on the 11th of this month at the age of 86.

According to Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), Tonegawa was born in Nagoya, Japan. After graduating from the Faculty of Science at Kyoto University, he advanced to academic institutions such as the Basel Institute for Immunology (BII) in Switzerland, later serving as a researcher at Japan's RIKEN and as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.

Tonegawa discovered how the human body produces antibodies—one form of immune response—against various viruses and bacteria, successfully solving a long-standing mystery in immunology, thus gaining international attention.

This series of research achievements was highly acclaimed, making him the first Japanese to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1987.

His research did not stop at immunology. While teaching at MIT, he shifted focus to brain science, a field different from his award-winning work, striving to unravel the mysteries of brain function. In recent years, through mouse experiments, he successfully achieved results in rewriting fear memories and obtained multiple important findings that help clarify memory mechanisms.

MIT announced that Tonegawa passed away on July 11. After a private funeral held by the family, he will be buried in Kyoto, Japan. (Translation: Yang Wei-ching) 1150716