Yasuhiro Kikuchi, M.D., Ph.D., of the Komatsu Laboratory in the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Cancer & Blood Disorders Institute and Institute for Fundamental Biomedical Research, has received the prestigious and extremely competitive American Cancer Society (ACS) Postdoctoral Fellowship Award. The ACS Postdoctoral Fellowship is particularly competitive, with a broad applicant pool because eligibility is not restricted by U.S. citizenship or permanent residency, allowing any postdoctoral researchers in the United States to apply.

Cuts to federal research funding have made competition for awards from ACS and similar organizations especially intense.

“Against this backdrop, Dr. Kikuchi’s selection for this award is a strong testament to his scientific talent, accomplishments, and potential as a physician scientist/investigator,” says Masanobu Komatsu, Ph.D., who leads the Komatsu lab in St. Petersburg, Florida, and serves as associate professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Oncology in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Since he joined Johns Hopkins All Children’s in 2022 as a postdoctoral fellow, Kikuchi has already made significant contributions to the research program. Most notably, he played a major role in the Nature Immunology publication from the Komatsu lab last year. Kikuchi received multiple awards during his graduate training in Japan, but the ACS Postdoctoral Fellowship represents his most prestigious recognition to date. He is a clinical pathologist in Japan, and this highly competitive national award is a well-deserved acknowledgment of his accomplishments and will undoubtedly contribute to his continued career advancement and growing recognition as a scientist.

Importantly, this is the first ACS award to Johns Hopkins All Children’s. In this award-winning project, he proposes to study the role of a novel subset of macrophages (a type of tumor-infiltrating immune cells) that restricts immune responses to pediatric sarcomas.

He is now preparing another paper for publication about a new therapeutic strategy to build an immunologically active environment in pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma by using agonists for cellular proteins called STING and lymphotoxin beta receptor. Rhabdomyosarcomas are refractory to immunotherapies, and advanced tumors can spread to the lungs, causing high mortality. Kikuchi’s strategy overcomes this problem by sensitizing these tumors to immunotherapies and blocking lung metastasis.