Makoto Asashima (浅島 誠, Asashima Makoto, born 1944) is a Japanese developmental biologist known for his pioneer research on Activin.

He is also Vice President of the Tokyo University of Science.

[1] Asashima and his colleagues identified Activin in 1990, which exhibits a wide range of biological activities including regulation of cellular proliferation and differentiation.

[2] Asashima was born in Sado, Niigata in 1944.

[4] He was a postdoctoral fellow under Heinz Tiedemann at Free University of Berlin between 1972 and 1974, and a member of the faculty of Yokohama City University between 1972 and 1993, before being appointed as a professor at The University of Tokyo in 1993.