Daiki Ikuta (M2), Department of Chemical System Engineering, received SCEJ 91st Annual Meeting Excellent Student Award

On 19th March 2026, Daiki Ikuta (M2), Department of Chemical System Engineering, received SCEJ 91st Annual Meeting Excellent Student Award.

SCEJ 91st Annual Meeting Excellent Student Award

Among poster presentations by students, the research and presenters were comprehensively evaluated by industry, academia, and government judges, and were awarded to those who were in the top 12% of all the presenters.

About awarded research
Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are considered a promising cell source for cell therapy; however, achieving both quality maintenance and high productivity during their culture process remains a key challenge for industrialization. While controlling intracellular energy metabolism has been recognized as an effective approach for maintaining quality and has been extensively studied experimentally, the development of quantitative mathematical models for process design has been insufficient. In particular, existing models are limited to either process models that do not account for intracellular states or metabolic flux analysis (MFA) under steady-state and constrained conditions, making them difficult to apply to process design with quality considerations. In this study, we developed a novel integrated MFA–process model for MSC culture. The results provide design guidelines for MSC culture processes that achieve both quality and productivity.

Your impression & future plan
This research was made possible through the guidance and support of Professor Hirokazu Sugiyama, as well as the members of our laboratory and our collaborators. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of them. Encouraged by this award, I intend to further advance this research during my doctoral studies.