is a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese virologist famous for his role in discovery of the anti-HIV

HIV

Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 drug zidovudine

Zidovudine

Zidovudine or azidothymidine is a nucleoside analog reverse-transcriptase inhibitor , a type of antiretroviral drug used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. It is an analog of thymidine....

 (AZT) as well as other anti-AIDS drugs including didanosine

Didanosine

Didanosine is sold under the trade names Videx and Videx EC. It is a reverse transcriptase inhibitor, effective against HIV and used in combination with other antiretroviral drug therapy as part of highly active antiretroviral therapy .-History:The related pro-drug of didanosine,...

 (ddI) and zalcitabine (ddC). Mitsuya obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. at Kumamoto University

Kumamoto University

is a university located in Kumamoto, Japan. It was established on May 31, 1949, at which time the following institutions were subsumed into it; Kumamoto Teachers College , Kumamoto Pharmaceutical College , The Fifth High School , Kumamoto Medical College , and Kumamoto Technical College ....

 in Japan. He joined the American National Cancer Institute

National Cancer Institute

The National Cancer Institute is part of the National Institutes of Health , which is one of 11 agencies that are part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The NCI coordinates the U.S...

 in Bethesda, Maryland

Bethesda, Maryland

Bethesda is a census designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House , which in turn took its name from Jerusalem's Pool of Bethesda...

, in 1982, working initially on human T cell leukemia virus type 1, before switching his attention to HIV. His identification of AZT as an anti-HIV drug, as well as the anti-HIV properties of didanosine

Didanosine

Didanosine is sold under the trade names Videx and Videx EC. It is a reverse transcriptase inhibitor, effective against HIV and used in combination with other antiretroviral drug therapy as part of highly active antiretroviral therapy .-History:The related pro-drug of didanosine,...

 and zalcitabine, was made in 1985. In December, 2006, he was awarded the first NIH World AIDS Day Award for his work in developing drugs for AIDS. Mitsuya has been chief of the NCI's Experimental Retrovirology Section since 1991.