Keiichi Itakura (板倉 啓壹, Itakura Keiichi, born February 18, 1942 in Tokyo, Japan) is an organic chemist and a Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the Beckman Research Institute at City of Hope National Medical Center.
He then accepted a fellowship with Saran A. Narang at the Division of Biological Sciences, National Research Council of Canada, to work on DNA synthesis.
[5] "We used the technology that Itakura was the master of to make small pieces of DNA, which greatly improved the ability to cut and splice exactly where you wanted.
Building on Khorana's work, Itakura developed a technique that reduced the time involved in successful synthesis from years to weeks.
[11][12] As their principal organic chemist, Keiichi Itakura was essential to the success of Genentech's development of synthetic insulin.