Prof. Dr. Kazumasa Wakamatsu, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry, Institute for Melanin Chemistry, Fujita Health University
(The portrait photograph was kindly provided by Prof. Wakamatsu)
This is a Science Portrait of Prof. Kazumasa Wakamatsu, Emeritus Professor at Fujita Health University. Below shows a summary of the most notable facts of his curriculum vitae (CV) followed by a summary of an interview that he gave for this blog. For a more complete CV see https://researchmap.jp/read0174710 or https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kazumasa-Wakamatsu.
Most notable facts of CV
Born June 28, 1953
Education Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan MS, 1979, Chemistry
Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan Ph.D., 1986, Chemistry
Fujita Health University, Toyoake, Japan, Ph.D. 1995, Medicine
Work
1987-2003 Department of Chemistry (under the leadership of Professor Shosuke Ito), Fujita Health University. 1987-1988 Instructor of Chemistry. 1988-1996 Assistant professor of Chemistry. 1996-2003 Associate professor of Chemistry.
1995-1996 Visiting Fellow, Department of Dermatology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
2001 Guest Research Professor, Division of Clinical Chemistry, Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University, Sweden (one month)
2003-2007 Professor of Clinical Analytical Chemistry, Fujita Health UniversitySchool of Health Sciences
2008-2019 Professor of Chemistry, Fujita Health University School of Health Sciences
2003-2019 Professor of Clinical Laboratory Medicine, Fujita Health University Graduate School of Health Sciences
2014-2019 Professor of Medical Technology Sciences, Fujita Health University Graduate School of Medical Sciences
2019-present Emeritus Professor, Fujita Health University
2020-present Founder and leader of the Institute for Melanin Chemistry, Fujita Health University
Most notable honors (among many other honors regarding awards, grants, journal editing and reviewing, and congress and scientific organization functions)
2015−2018 President of Japanese Society for Pigment Cell Research
2017 Takeuchi Medal (International Federation of Pigment Cell Societies)
2020 Seiji Makoto Memorial Award (Lydia O’Leary Memorial Pias Dermatological Foundation)
Publications
>390 publications in international, peer-reviewed journals. Of these, three were in Nature (2006, 2018, 2019), two in Science (2015, 2019), and eight in PNAS (1988, 2004, 2005, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2017, 2019). Excitingly, he also has a very recent publication in Cell, which probably soon will be highlighted in FUJITA, the monthly magazine of our University.
Summary of an Interview with Professor Kazumasa Wakamatsu
(Professor Wakamatsu kindly gave an interview for this blog and approved of its summary as here posted.)
What stands out most from the scientific life story of Prof. Wakamatsu, an exceptionally friendly gentleman, is that—as he describes it—he is “a man wearing two pairs of straw sandals.” That will say, he is having two jobs that at first sight are so different that one wonders how they can be combined. One of his jobs is being a professor in chemistry and the other job—into which he was born—is being a chief priest in the Seizan Jodo Shu (Pure Land Sect) of Buddhism.
His future priesthood was destined when in 1953 he was born in the Eikokuji Temple (https://eikokuji.jp/), in Naka-ku, in the Center of Nagoya. At that time, his grandfather was the chief priest of the temple, and his father would inherit that function afterward. The temple was founded in 1686 by Mitsutomo Tokugawa, the second feudal lord of the Owari clan, in commemoration of >200 Christians that had been executed at the site in 1664. Nowadays, the temple includes the Christian Archeology museum, and on its grounds the temple also runs a nursery school. Furthermore, the temple features the famous Amida Nyorai statue, one of the three biggest Buddha statues in Nagoya. Special is that during the second world war, the houses near Eikokuji Temple were not burned down. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather and father, Prof. Wakamatsu became chief priest in 2006. He says to derive a lot of spiritual satisfaction and joy from praying for and guiding his congregation. He also explains that the daily changes between the different focuses required by his jobs as chief priest and professor are very healthy for his spirit.
I wondered what from the perspective of a chief priest would be the most positive point of Fujita Health University. Prof. Wakamatsu answered that he found our university to be unique. Because Fujita is not so big, he said, there are intensive relationships between teachers and students. He himself, for example, still keeps close contact with many of his former students. Even nowadays, as an Emeritus Professor, Prof. Wakamatsu is teaching students once a week.
But how did someone, born in a temple, become a professor? It turns out that the young Kazumasa chose to study chemistry at Nagoya University to become a high school teacher. That indeed is a job with many similarities to being a priest. During the holidays, as a student of Nagoya University, Kazumasa went to the head temple of Jodo Buddhism in Kyoto to study for the priesthood. In Japan, priesthood is often combined with other jobs, so the education for the priesthood is so organized that it can be combined with other educations. But then, when Kazumasa got a master’s degree in organic chemistry, he was invited to enter a Ph.D. course at Nagoya University in the Department of Chemistry which was under the leadership of the famous Professor Dr. Yoshimasa Hirata. And that’s how it all began………………
Prof. Hirata (1915-2000) discovered many natural products, including tetrodotoxin, which is a neurotoxin found in pufferfish. He has the prestigious “Hirata Award” named after him (https://www.itbm.nagoya-u.ac.jp/hirata/index.html). Exemplifying the quality of Prof. Hirata’s research group is that one of the researchers who he supervised was Professor Dr. Osamu Shimomura who later, in 2008, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In the same year that the young Kazumasa joined this group for doing his Ph.D., Prof. Hirata retired (https://www.chem.nagoya-u.ac.jp/en/about/history2.html). However, his assistant professor Dr. Kiyoyuki Yamada became the new group leader, and with him Kazumasa would publish many articles on the chemical synthesis and structural determination of natural products. These natural products carry intriguing names such as anisatin, ptaquiloside, tutin, ptelatoside, picrotoxinin, coriamyrtin, and asteromurin A. For this work, Kazumasa would get his Ph.D., after which he was recruited by a former group member, Prof. Dr. Soshuke Ito, who had moved on to Fujita Health University and there had become the leader of the Department of Chemistry. He visited his old group at Nagoya University to look for promising researchers to join his staff at Fujita, and so found the young Dr. Wakamatsu who he hired in 1987. This would turn out to become a life-long professional collaboration and friendship, and even now they still work together (see below).
At Fujita, from 1987, Dr. Wakamatsu moved through the ranks, mostly working for or with Prof. Ito. In 2003, Dr. Wakamatsu would become an independent professor, and since 2019, after he retired, he became an Emeritus Professor of our university. In September 2020, at Fujita Health University, he founded the “Institute for Melanin Chemistry” in which his friend Prof. Ito is now one of the members. Prof. Wakamatsu’s career at Fujita has been very productive, and, for the most part, has to directly or indirectly do with melanin. Melanin is a family of biopolymer pigments that are best known for determining the darkness of our skin but also have various other functions in humans and other species. When asked about the biggest scientific achievements in which he has been involved, Prof. Wakamatsu mentioned (1) the chemical and structural analysis of various melanins and (2) the optimization of the diagnostics of melanoma cancer based on serum markers. As for (1), melanins are very large polymers with variations in building blocks and their arrangement, but Prof. Wakamatsu and Prof. Ito overcame the difficulty of their analysis by developing a unique set of methods. These methods allowed them to play frontier roles in the elucidation of the pathways and functions of melanins, and also enabled them to analyze melanins from fossils of different species such as dinosaurs and extinct insects. As for (2), this all started with Dr. Wakamatsu’s very first paper as first author with Prof. Ito in 1988 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2461020/). This paper was about the finding that the concentrations of the melanin-related metabolites such as 5-S-cysteinyldopa (5SCD) are highly upregulated in the urine of mice bearing melanoma tumors. The principle of the finding, based on the fact that for some reason melanoma tumor cells tend to release melanin precursors into the blood stream (https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/21/2/432), had been shown by other researchers previously. However, Prof. Wakamatsu and Prof. Ito have been working for >30 years on optimizing and understanding the diagnostical method of (early) detection of melanoma by analysis of 5SCD and other melanin-metabolites in the blood or urine of patients. With melanin metabolism being different between human races, they have been especially critical for optimizing this diagnostics method for the Japanese population. For about a period of 30 years and even now, they have been measuring 5SCD in serum of 500 samples per year from seven facilities nationwide (https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/21/2/432). Melanoma is one of the most lethal and malignant cancers and its incidence is increasing worldwide, and Japan is not an exception. Although there are numerous therapeutic options for melanoma, the prognosis is still poor once it has metastasized. Therefore, the early detection of this disease to which Prof. Wakamatsu and Prof. Ito dedicated a large part of their scientific lives, is of utter importance.
To end this interview with a happy note, it was nice to hear—when asked about hobbies— Prof. Wakamatsu explained that in the past he used to play tennis with Prof. Ito. Seeing how Prof. Wakamatsu and Prof. Ito still work together, and how prolific and medically relevant their scientific lives have been and still are, I (and probably most researchers) would immediately sign up for a possibility to be so successful while working with a good friend.
