The Hatanaka Award is dedicated to one of the main personalities who led to the development of BNCT: Hiroshi Hatanaka. As an Exchange Scholar with the support of a Fulbright Travel Grant, he joined the laboratory of Prof. William H. Sweet, who first had realized the clinical potential of BNCT to treat cancer and at the time Chief of the Neurosurgical Service at Massachusetts General Hospital. In 1968, in Japan, the team led by Hatanaka started the BNCT treatment of patients with malignant brain tumors using the new boron compound Na2B12H11SH, now commonly known as BSH.The Hitachi Training Reactor and the Musashi Institute of Technology Reactor were initially used as neutron sources, and a neutron irradiation facility at the Kyoto University Research Reactor from 1974. Between 1966 and 1993, Hatanaka treated approximately 120 patients with high grade gliomas using a combination of surgery and BNCT. The results obtained by Hatanaka were favorable, suggesting the efficacy of BNCT, nevertheless Hatanaka had to face high doses of criticism and skepticism from neurosurgeons and radiation oncologists. Hatanaka persevered, and it is also thanks to his efforts that the value of BNCT is now more and more recognized worldwide.
1994-2024 Hatanaka Award Recipients
2024 – 20th ICNCT (Kraków, Poland) – Andrés Kreiner (Argentina)
2021 – 19th ICNCT (Granada, Spain) – Fong-In Chou (Taiwan) &Leena Kankaanranta (Finland)
2018 – 18th ICNCT (Taipei, Taiwan) – Amanda E. Schwint (Argentina) & Mitsunori Kirihata (Japan) & Junichi Hiratsuka (Japan)
2016 – 17th ICNCT (Missouri, USA) – Heikki Joensuu (Finland)
2014 – 16th ICNCT (Helsinki, Finland) – Shin-Ichi Miyatake (Japan)
2012 – 15th ICNCT (Tsukuba, Japan) – Raymond Moss (Netherlands)
2010 – 14th ICNCT (Buenos Aires, Argentina) – Tooru Kobayashi (Japan) & Akira Matsumura (Japan) & Koji Ono (Japan)
2008 – 13th ICNCT (Florence, Italy) – Otto Harling (USA)
2006 – 12th ICNCT (Kagawa, Japan) – David Nigg (USA) & Wolfgang Sauerwein (Germany)
2004 – 11th ICNCT (Boston, USA) – Rolf Barth (USA)
2002 – 10th ICNCT (Essen, Germany) – Yoshinobu Nakagawa (Japan)
2000 – 9th ICNCT (Osaka, Japan) – Detlef Gabel (Germany)
1998 – 8th ICNCT (La Jolla, USA) – Borje Larsson (Sweden)
1996 – 7th ICNCT (Zurich, Switzerland) – Yoshinori Yamamoto (Japan)
1994 – 6th ICNCT (Kobe, Japan) – Jeffrey Coderre (USA)