Daiki Ikuta (D1), Department of Chemical System Engineering, received PSE Asia 2026 Best Oral Award

On 7th July 2026, Daiki Ikuta (D1), Department of Chemical System Engineering, received PSE Asia 2026 Best Oral Award.

PSE Asia 2026 Best Oral Award

This award is presented to outstanding student oral presentations selected from those accepted and delivered at the 12th ASIAN SYMPOSIUM ON Process Systems Engineering (PSE Asia 2026).

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

I am deeply honored to receive this award. This research was made possible through the guidance and support of Professor Hirokazu Sugiyama, the members of our laboratory, and our research collaborators. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone involved. Encouraged by this award, I will continue to further develop this research, advance the modeling approaches, and contribute the resulting knowledge to practical manufacturing applications.