Masakazu Toi, MD, PhD

Dr. Masakazu Toi is a Director at the Tokyo Metropolitan Cancer and Infectious Disease Center, a high-volume center of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, and holds an Emeritus Professorship at the Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University. Before assuming his current position, Dr. Toi was a senior physician-scientist and professor at the Graduate School of Medicine and the Faculty of Medicine, Kyoto University. Over the past few decades, he has been actively engaged in state-of-the-art breast cancer care, clinical trials, and translational breast cancer research, with a particular focus on the tumor microenvironment and systemic responses.

Dr. Toi earned his medical doctorate from Hiroshima University School of Medicine in 1982 and completed his Ph.D. in 1988. He continued his training in molecular biology and tumor angiogenesis at Oxford University’s Institute of Molecular Medicine in the UK from 1990 to 1992. Soon after, Dr. Toi was appointed an academic visitor to Prof. Adrian L. Harr in the Department of Clinical Oncology at Oxford University’s John Radcliffe Hospital. From 1992 to 2007, Dr. Toi continued his clinical practice at Tokyo Metropolitan Cancer and Infectious Disease Center, a high-volume center of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Soon after, Dr. Toi became the Director of the Departments of Surgery and Clinical Trials. In 2000, as a Yamagiwa-Yoshida fellow of the UICC for advanced oncology experience, Dr. Toi visited the Department of Breast Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard University. He was also instrumental in shaping many aspects of the Society-Academia Collaboration for Innovation at Kyoto University from 2016 to 2018, serving as its Deputy Director. Dr. Toi has been conducting clinical trials of new generations of therapeutics and diagnostics. He has published more than 1000 papers in English and Japanese. Dr. Toi received the SGH special award in 2021 and is currently serving as the Chairman of the Japanese Breast Cancer Society.