Tetsuro Matano
Invited Speaker, National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID)
Tetsuro Matano, MD, PhD
Director-General, National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID)
Executive Director, Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS)
Professor, Institute of Medical Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
Governing Council, International AIDS Society (IAS)
Brief Biography: Tetsuro Matano worked as an Orthopaedic surgeon for five years from 1985 and then started basic research on Virology. He obtained Doctor of Medical Sciences (D.M.Sc.) at Graduate School of Medicine, Univ. Tokyo in 1994. He started his study on AIDS pathogenesis using monkey AIDS models at NIAID, NIH, and reported crucial evidence indicating the importance of CD8+ T cell responses in immunodeficiency virus control. He has been a Professor at Institute of Medical Science, Univ. Tokyo since 2006. He was appointed as the Director at AIDS Research Center in NIID in 2010, and the Deputy Director-General in NIID in 2022. At the establishment of the new organization, Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS), in April, 2025, he was appointed as the Director-General of NIID in JIHS. He was a co-chair of AIDS Panel in U.S.-Japan Cooperative Medical Science Program in 2014-2023. He has been a Governing Council member of IAS and a co-chair of HIV Vaccine Industry Partnership Group since 2024. He has established a unique AIDS model using MHC-defined rhesus macaques for analysis of HIV/SIV-specific T cell responses and developed a novel CTL-based HIV vaccine system using Sendai viral vectors, whose clinical trial phase I at Rwanda, Kenya and U.K. in collaboration with IAVI confirmed its safety and immunogenicity. He is now working on virus-host immune interaction, microbiome, and development of vaccines against HIV-1, HTLV-1, and SARS-CoV-2 infection. He also plays a key role in facilitating human resource development and international cooperation as an Executive Director in JIHS.
