菅裕明1963—

生平

菅裕明于1963年生于日本冈山县冈山市，1986年于冈山大学获学士学位，1989年又获硕士学位，随后留学美国麻省理工学院（MIT），于1994年获化学博士学位，指导教授为日裔美国生化学家正宗悟。毕业后菅裕明至麻省总医院杰克·索斯塔克实验室进行三年的博士后研究，1997年获纽约州立大学水牛城分校化学系聘为助理教授，2002年晋升为副教授，2003年将实验室迁至日本东京大学先端科学技术研究中心，不久后晋升为正教授。

2020年菅裕明入选日本学术会议会员；2022年他入选日本内阁府综合科学技术创新会议（CSTI）议员，同年5月起担任日本化学会会长

2023年，菅裕明获颁该年度的沃尔夫化学奖。

研究

菅裕明主要的研究项目为利用带有特殊氨基酸的tRNA转译生成特殊多肽，他开发了名为“Flexizyme”的核酶，此核酶为广效的氨酰-tRNA合成酶，可催化多种特殊氨基酸（生物正常编码的20种氨基酸以外的氨基酸）的腺苷酰化反应，制造带有特殊氨基酸的氨酰tRNA，进而重新编码遗传密码，利用核糖体合成带有特殊氨基酸的多肽。以此技术为基础，菅裕明开发了名为“RaPID”的高通量多肽实验系统，可合成数十亿种多肽，并检测其中是否有可和特定蛋白质结合而具临床应用价值者。

2006年，菅裕明开设新创公司PeptiDream以推广RaPID系统，与数家制药公司合作。PeptiDream已在东京证券交易所上市。

Hiroaki Suga (菅 裕明, born February 21, 1963) is a Japanese biochemist and businessman. He is best known for his work on artificial ribozymes (flexizymes) and their application in mRNA display (RaPID, random nonstandard peptide integrated discovery).

Suga was awarded the 2023 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, jointly with Chuan He and Jeffery W. Kelly, "for pioneering discoveries that illuminate the functions and pathological dysfunctions of RNA and proteins and for creating strategies to harness the capabilities of these biopolymers in new ways to ameliorate human diseases."

Education

Suga graduated from Okayama University (BSc, MSc) in engineering, and studied at University of Lausanne, where he worked with Manfred Schlosser.

Suga completed his Ph.D. in chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 with Satoru Masamune, working on catalytic antibodies

Career

Scientific

After graduating from MIT with a Ph.D., Suga was a postdoctoral researcher at the Jack W. Szostak lab of Harvard Medical School before starting his independent career at University at Buffalo. Since 2003 he is a faculty member at the University of Tokyo.

Business

Suga is also a founder of PeptiDream Inc. Tokyo, a publicly traded biopharmaceutical start-up company responsible for discovering and developing non-standard peptide therapeutics in addition to addressing unmet medical needs as well as investigating peptide drug conjugates (PDC), peptides, and small molecule-based drugs. It is traded publicly on the Tokyo First Stock Exchange Market (the market capitalization is over JY 600 billions), which has many partnerships with pharmaceutical companies in worldwide.

Suga is chair of the editorial board at RSC Chemical Biology and associate editor at Angewandte Chemie.

Awards

• 2014 – Akabori Memorial Award (Japanese Peptide Society)
• 2016 – Max Bergmann Gold Medal (German Peptide Society)
• 2016 – Nippon Venture Award (METI)
• 2017 – Nagoya Silver Medal of Organic Chemistry (MSD Life Science Foundation)
• 2019 – Vincent du Vigneaud Award (American Peptide Society)
• 2020 – Humboldt Prize (Humboldt Foundation)
• 2020 – World Entrepreneur of the Year, Japan (EY)
• 2022 – Prelog Medal (ETH Zurich)
• 2023 – Wolf Prize in Chemistry (Wolf Foundation)
• 2024 – Asian Scientist 100 (Asian Scientist)
• 2026 – Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society