Dr. Fumiichiro Yamamoto has received the prestigious Karl Landsteiner Memorial Award and Lectureship from the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) in San Antonio, Texas, USA. The Karl Landsteiner Award for 2019 recognizes people who have led research groups that have been instrumental in the isolation and cloning of the major blood group carrier molecules. This year four scientists were honored: Dr. David Anstee, from the Bristol Institute for Transfusion Sciences (United Kingdom); Dr. Jean-Pierre Cartron, from Institut National de la Transfusion Sanguine (France); Dr. Colvin Redman, from the New York Blood Center (United States) and our group leader Dr. Fumiichiro Yamamoto, from the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute.
Dr. Yamamoto is a familiar name in immunohematology textbooks for his seminal work on defining the molecular genetic basis for the ABO blood group system. After receiving his Ph.D. in Developmental and Cellular Biology from the Osaka City University, in Japan, he worked for many years in the USA, at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, at the University of Washington-affiliated non-profit research institute, at The Biomembrane Institute, and at the Sanford-Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute.
After working in the USA, Dr. Yamamoto moved to Spain. He first worked in the Institute of Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer (IMPPC), and afterward, he joined the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC). He leads the research group of Immunohematology and Glycobiology in the IJC, contributing to a better understanding of glycosylation polymorphisms and cancer-specific glycosylation alterations, as well as the development of novel immunotherapy that targets those alterations.
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The Karl Landsteiner Award is the latest of a string of international awards for Dr. Yamamoto's work on blood groups: The Jean Julliard Prize from the International Society of Blood Transfusion, the Keynote Lecture Award from the Japanese Society of Blood Transfusion, and the French Diplome de Docteur Honoris Causa from the University of Toulouse.