ASTRA 2025

Hitomi Kawai

Young Investigators, Tsukuba University Hospital

Dr. Hitomi Kawai (MD, PhD) is a medical pathologist at Tsukuba University Hospital and an assistant professor at the University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. She obtained her PhD degree in 2020 and is currently focusing on the stepwise progression of lung carcinoma, especially lung adenocarcinoma. As a pathologist, she has a particular interest in the molecular mechanism responsible for the morphological diversity and intratumoral heterogeneity of lung adenocarcinoma. As a graduate student, she reported a very rare case of lung adenocarcinoma showing ectopic HNF4α expression and mucinous to non-mucinous intratumoral transition, and revealed for the first time the gene mutation profiles related to such transition (Lung Cancer 2019). Furthermore, in a recent study of morphological, immunohistochemical and gene mutation profiles in HNF4α-positive lung adenocarcinoma, she was able to show that the biological impact of HNF4α expression varied in accordance with pathological characteristics (Virchow Archiv, 2025). Dr. Kawai has also participated in collaborative research with Dr. Ayako Suzuki (Nature Commun 2023, 2024) involving spatial transcriptome analysis to examine the gene expression profiles related to morphological transition from non-invasive to invasive lesions.