At the 2020 Doosan Yonkang Academic Awards Ceremony held at Lotte Hotel in Sogong-dong, Seoul on the 22nd, Doosan Yonkang Foundation Chairman Park Yong-hyun (right) and Young Doctors Publisher Lee Wang-jun (left) are taking a commemorative photo with the award winner, Seoul Asan Medical Center Department of Gastroenterology Clinical Instructor Choi Won-mook (center).

On the 22nd, Doosan Yonkang Foundation (Chairman Yong-Hyun Park) announced that it held the 2020 Doosan Yonkang Academic Award Medical Paper Award Ceremony at Lotte Hotel in Sogong-dong, Seoul, and awarded 30 million won in prize money and a plaque to the winner, Won-Muk Choi, a clinical instructor in the Department of Gastroenterology at Seoul Asan Medical Center.

The winning paper, titled ‘Study on the Role of Glutamate Receptors-Endocannabinoids in Hepatic Stellate Cells in the Development of Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease’, was published in the international academic journal ‘Cell Metabolism’ in November of last year.

This paper proved for the first time in the world that the neurotransmitter glutamate acts as a kind of ‘metabolic synapse’ that regulates metabolism between hepatocytes and hepatic stellate cells in the development of alcoholic fatty liver disease, thereby suggesting a new target for the development of therapeutic agents.

The Doosan Yonkang Academic Award in the medical paper category was established in 2006 to encourage young medical researchers and contribute to the development of Korean medicine, and this year marks the 15th anniversary.