Rate My Professor Kenji Chamoto

Kenji Chamoto is Professor in the Division of Cancer Immune Regulation at the Center for Cancer Immunotherapy and Immunobiology (CCII), Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University. He graduated from the PhD course in the Department of Disease Control at the Graduate School of Medicine, Hokkaido University in 2006. Following his doctoral training, he held positions as Assistant Professor at the Institute for Genetic Medicine, Hokkaido University from 2006 to 2010, followed by postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2010–2011 and at the Ontario Cancer Institute/Princess Margaret Cancer Center from 2011 to 2015. He joined Kyoto University in 2015 as Assistant Professor in the Department of Immunology and Genomic Medicine, later serving as Lecturer in 2016 and Associate Professor in 2018, before becoming Program-specific Professor in the Department of Immuno-oncology PDT in 2023. In February 2026 he was appointed Professor of the Division of Cancer Immune Regulation at CCII.

Chamoto’s research centers on tumor immunology, with emphasis on immune surveillance mechanisms in cancer, PD-1 blockade, T-cell regulation of anti-tumor immunity, immunometabolism, mitochondrial function in T cells, aging, and intestinal bacteria. His work has explored how metabolic states influence immune cell activation, exhaustion, and responsiveness to therapy, including studies on fatty acid oxidation, spermidine, and PPAR-induced pathways to enhance PD-1 blockade efficacy. He has contributed to key publications such as “Insights from a 30-year journey: function, regulation and therapeutic modulation of PD1” in Nature Reviews Immunology (2023) and “Spermidine activates mitochondrial trifunctional protein & improves antitumor immunity in mice” in Science (2022). Among his honors are the Kiyoko & Paul Bourdarie-Goto Scientific Prize Special Prize in 2021 and the Young Investigator Award from the Japanese Cancer Association in 2017. Chamoto is committed to translational research that bridges basic science with clinical applications to improve cancer immunotherapy outcomes.