Professor Yasuhito Tanaka, MD, PhD, is Professor of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Kumamoto University, Japan. He has worked as a hepatologist since 1991, focusing on chronic viral hepatitis.

His research integrates clinical and translational approaches, including molecular evolutionary analyses and international collaborations. He has contributed to HCV molecular clock studies and identified HBV core mutations associated with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Since 2007, he has led a national genome-wide association study (GWAS) project, identifying IL28B and ITPA variants associated with treatment response. His group has conducted large-scale multi-omics analyses in over 8,000 samples and identified a TLL1 variant linked to HCC after HCV eradication.

He also leads HBV drug discovery and has established monitoring strategies to prevent HBV reactivation. He has published 544 original articles (total impact factor: 3,672.9; citations: 22,289; H-index: 72) and received 22 awards.