Masato (Mas) Tanabe is a world-renowned scientist. He was recognized as an SRI Fellow in 1984 for his innovations in steroid hormone therapeutics. He also helped develop SRI’s long-term and beneficial relationships with the Japanese pharmaceutical industry.
As Program Manager of Steroid Chemistry and then Director of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Tanabe devoted 45 years to the study of steroid hormones. Because of the outstanding talent of this group and Tanabe’s leadership, many outstanding contributions to excellent steroid chemistry and drug development were made at SRI. The culmination of this work is the successful development of the drug SR 16234 to be used in the treatment of breast cancer. The goal in developing this drug was to create a very tissue-selective estrogen that would act like an anti-estrogen in the breast and uterus but would appear as normal estrogen to bones and other responsive tissue. The drug can be taken orally, thus substantially lowering the cost of administration. The drug, licensed to Taiho Pharmaceutical Co., Tokyo, has already successfully completed Phase I trials, is finishing Phase II, and has the potential to become a very effective drug against breast cancer. During the past six years of development, Tanabe has been the "Drug Champion" of SR 16234.
Tanabe visited Japan and promoted SRI business there for many years, establishing a strong reputation for SRI as well as his own steroid program. He fostered extensive postdoctoral and international fellowships at SRI in which he trained many Japanese scientists. These students then became very distinguished in their own right as worldwide experts in steroids and in the biosynthesis of natural products. In 2001, Tanabe was awarded the Japanese Pharmaceutical Society’s Distinguished Service Award for a long history of helping Japanese academic scientists and companies in the chemical and pharmaceutical fields. In particular, the award recognized his dedication to the scientific exchange represented by the 45 scientists who have come to SRI to study under him. He is the first person outside of Japan to win this honor.
Mas Tanabe leaves SRI a legacy of enormous advances in steroid chemistry and drug development -- representing a robust portfolio of high-value intellectual property -- as well the strong relationship SRI enjoys with the Japanese pharmaceutical industry because of his research and the many students he nurtured.