Dr. Akira Kawai

Akira Kawai, MD, PhD is Head of Musculoskeletal Oncology and Rehabilitation Medicine at National Cancer Center Hospital (NCCH) in Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Kawai was born in Fukuoka and grew up in Okayama city, a pretty town in the Western part of Japan. He obtained his medical degree from Okayama University Medical School in 1985, and received his PhD in 1991 thesis on “A newly established human osteosarcoma cell line with osteoblastic properties.” After his PhD, Dr. Kawai served as an Assistant Professor of the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Okayama University Medical School. He worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center between 1996 and 1998 as a Research Fellow, specializing in Orthopaedic Surgery (Dr JH Healey) and Molecular Pathology (Dr M Ladanyi). He transferred to NCCH at 2002. Since 2006, he has served as a Head of Orthopaedic Surgery, later Musculoskeletal Oncology at NCCH. Dr. Kawai is an active member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Connective Tissue Oncology Society, SICOT, Japanese Cancer Association, and the Japanese Orthopaedic Association. He is also the director of Bone and Soft Tissue Tumor Registry in Japan.

Dr Kawai has a lifetime of dedication to patient care and research in bone and soft tissue sarcomas. His clinical practice focuses exclusively on this disease entity. He is involved in sarcoma laboratory research in close cooperation with scientists at National Cancer Center Research Institute, including Pharmacoproteomics, Cancer Genomics, and Molecular and Cellular Medicine, focusing on the prognostic/predictive biomarkers of sarcoma, whole genome sequencing of chondrosarcoma, as well as the development of novel therapeutics based on RNA interference against tumor-initiating cells of osteosarcoma. He is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed articles.

Dr. Kawai joined the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative's Medical Advisory and Editorial Board in October 2012.

Copyright © 2012 Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative.