Utako Okamoto | |
|---|---|
 Okamoto in 2012 | |
| Born | 1 April 1918 Tokyo, Japan |
| Died | 21 April 2016 (aged 98) Kobe, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Education | Tokyo Women's Medical University (MD) |
| Occupation | medical doctor |
| Years active | 1945–2014 |
| Known for | discovered tranexamic acid |
| Relatives | Shosuke Okamoto (husband), Kumi Nakamura (daughter) |
| Medical career | |
| Institutions | Keio University, Kobe Gakuin University |
| Sub-specialties | antiplasmin |
| Research | blood / hemostasis |
Utako Okamoto (岡本歌子, Okamoto Utako, 1 April 1918 – 21 April 2016) was a Japanese medical doctor working as a medical scientist who discovered tranexamic acid in the 1950s in her quest to find a drug that would treat bleeding after childbirth (post-partum haemorrhage). After publishing results in 1962 she became a chair at Kobe Gakuin University, where she worked from 1966 until her retirement in 1990. Okamoto's career was hampered by a very male dominated environment. During her lifetime she was unable to persuade obstetricians at Kobe to trial the antifibrinolytic agent, which had become a drug on the WHO list of essential medicines in 2009. She lived to see the 2010 beginning of the study of tranexamic acid in 20 000 women with post-partum haemorrhage, but died before its completion in 2016 and the publication of tranexamic acids fatality preventing results in 2017, that she had predicted.