Yoshiki Sasai

On August 5, 2014, he was found dead hanging at the RIKEN institute. It is believed that he committed suicide.

In 2012, Sasai became the first stem cell researcher to grow an optic cup from human cells.

In 2010, Sasai received the Osaka Science Prize for his work on in vitro recapitulation of brain development. He was also the laureate of the 2012 Inoue Prize for Science.

Subsequently Sasai worked as a research fellow at Edward M. De Robertis's laboratory at UCLA School of Medicine until 1996. He became an associate professor at Kyoto University in 1996, and a full professor in 1998. In 2003, he moved to the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology as Director of the organogenesis and neurogenesis group.

Yoshiki Sasai (笹井 芳樹 , Sasai Yoshiki, 5 March 1962 – 5 August 2014) was a stem cell biologist. He developed methods to guide human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) into forming brain cortex, eyes, and other organs in tissue culture. Sasai was one of the founding leaders of the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology (CDB) in Kobe, a premier research institute for biology in Japan and Director of the Laboratory for Organogenesis and Neurogenesis at the research institute RIKEN.

Yoshiki Sasai was born in 1962 in Hyogo, Japan. He received his medical degree from Kyoto University's School of Medicine in 1986. He was awarded a PhD from the Kyoto University's School of Medicine in 1993 and recruited to play the sport he loved, American football, for Kyoto University when he studied medicine there. Sasai was then a resident at Kobe Municipal General Hospital.