Yuki Kinjo received his M.D. and Ph.D. from University of the Ryukyus where he started his NKT cell research on host defense against microbial infections with Dr. Kazuyoshi Kawakami. Then, he joined Dr. Mitchell Kronenberg’s laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow at La Jolla Institute for Immunology and identified several bacterial glycolipid antigens for NKT cells together with Dr. Kronenberg and his colleagues. Kinjo was appointed as a laboratory head at National Institute of Infectious Diseases (in Japan) in 2009 and was appointed to his current position in 2018. Kinjo and his colleagues study the mechanisms of NKT cell-mediated augmentation of antibody production by a pneumococcal protein and glycolipid vaccine.