Lasker Award 2026
A clever antibody that helps blood clot
Kunihiro Hattori, Takehisa Kitazawa and Tomoyuki Igawa share the 2026 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for emicizumab, a medicine for haemophilia A. It can be given under the skin as rarely as once a month, and more than 30,000 people have already benefited.
· Japan
On 9 September 2026, the Lasker Foundation announced that three scientists from Japan’s Chugai Pharmaceutical, Kunihiro Hattori, Takehisa Kitazawa and Tomoyuki Igawa, will receive the 2026 Lasker~DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.
People with haemophilia A do not have enough working Factor VIII, a protein the blood needs to clot, so they can bleed even without an injury. It mostly affects males: about 1 in 4,000. The older medicine had to be injected into a vein several times a week, and about 30% of people with severe disease make antibodies that stop it working.
In 2000, Kunihiro Hattori had an idea: an antibody that grabs two other clotting factors and brings them together, doing Factor VIII’s job. Early versions made bleeding worse in animal tests, but the team kept going. With Takehisa Kitazawa leading the biology and Tomoyuki Igawa the engineering, they screened tens of thousands of antibody combinations and found the winning molecule in 2010.
Why it matters
In clinical trials, the medicine cut bleeding by as much as 87%, even in patients whose bodies had rejected older treatments. The US FDA approved it in 2017.
Emicizumab can be given under the skin as rarely as once a month, instead of frequent injections into a vein. More than 30,000 people worldwide have already benefited.
