Dr Ken Kato is a medical oncologist. His primary interest is chemotherapy and chemoradiotherapy for oesophageal, esophagogastric, and gastric cancer. Chief of Department of Head and Neck, and Esophageal medical oncology, and Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, National Cancer Center Hospital, 2020-2022. Chief, Biobank Translational Research Support Section, Clinical Research Coordinating Section, Clinical Research Support Office, National Cancer Center Hospital. He is a group coordinator of the Japan Esophageal Oncology Group of JCOG, the biggest clinical trial group for cancer in Japan.

He and his group have conducted clinical trials to develop new chemotherapy for metastatic disease and early oesophageal cancer in multimodality therapy. As a study coordinator, he has conducted the randomized phase III trial, which compared the surgery and chemoradiotherapy for clinical stage I oesophageal squamous carcinoma, named JCOG0502, which reported the non-inferiority of chemoradiotherapy to surgery. He and his group conducted the randomized phase III trial of neoadjuvant therapy for resectable oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma, named JCOG1109.

He also committed to the international phase III trial of oesophageal and gastric cancer with an immune-checkpoint inhibitor.

His research interest is to develop a new combination of therapy and translational research to improve the outcomes of oesophageal cancer patients.