Society of Gene Therapy renamed “Japan Society of Gene and Cell Therapy”
With this decision, to be enacted from Sept. 2015, the society follows the moves by the European and US sister societies. Nikkei Biotech news release, July 24, 2015
NEDO: demonstration project for smart community project in Lisbon, Portugal, on energy management
In this project, supported by NTT Data Corporation, Daikin Industries and Japan Research Institute, Inc., the National Energy Institute of Geology of Portugal (LNEG) will cooperate for 3 years to establish an automatic demand response to energy consumption in selected household of Lisbon. In addition, a system will be built which shifts demand from the […]
NEDO supplies 11 EV buses and EV charging facilities to Putraya City, Malaysia
In the framework of NEDO’s “smart community program”, NEDO has chosen Putraya City as a hub to introduce EV bus systems in a tropical climate. Toshiba Corporation, PUES Co., Hasetekku, and Oriental Consultants Co. will support this project. Ultrarapid charging of 10 min will be provided. NEDO news release, July 22, 2015
Micro-needle patch shows good efficiency as vaccination tool: Osaka University
The group around Shinsaku NAKAGAWA at Osaka University has found that vaccination can be effectively done when replacing injection of vaccines by microneedles embedded in a hyaluronic acid-based cushion which eventually dissolves. The microneedles pierce the outermost layer of skin and dissolve embedded vaccine into the body. Tests with volunteers applying various avian flu and […]
Japanese team develops barcoding of > 230 fish species from environmental DNA
Using water samples from the Kuroshio aquarium in Okinawa, a technique was developed to analyze the diversity of fish in the aquarium by environmental DNA sequencing. The method is based on primers which pair with conserved sequences common to all 30.000 fish species. JST news release, July 22, 2015
NEDO starts first smart community demonstration project in Canada
In this project designed for Oshawa City and organized in collaboration with Oshawa Power and Utilities Co. (OPUC), Tabuchi Electric Co, under a NEDO contract, will install controllable hybrid inverter systems, solar panels and storage batteries in 30 houses of Oshawa. In Oshawa, Ontario, power failure occurs more than 200 times throughout the year due […]
Team at Kyoto University succeeds to generate human germ cells from pluripotent stem cells in vitro
A team at Kyoto University around Mitinoru Saitou and including CiRA succeded to differentiate in vitro human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) into incipient mesoderm-like cells (iMeLCs), which robustly generated human primordial germ cell-like cells (hPGCLCs) that could be purified using the surface markers EpCAM and INTEGRINα6. JST news release, July 17, 2015
NIPRO develops bag system for mass culture of hematopoietic stem cells
Nipro has licensed-in a patent for autologous bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells from Sapporo Medical University and wants to add a bag system to its culture system based on adherent cells Nipro website, Nikkei Biotech July 17, 2015
Osaka University Venture starts Epigeneron, an epigenetic drug discovery company
The key technology of Epigeneron is locus-specific chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP). Nikkei Biotech news release, July 15, 2015
Team at Chiba University develops artificial biosynthetic pathway for axtaxanthin
The group around Daisuke UMENO has developed a technique to construct artificial biosynthetic pathways from non-specific enzymes. Based on the assembly of a six-enzyme pathway in E. coli and judicious matching of engineered size-selectivity variants of the first two enzymes, branching into undesired side-products could be suppressed and, after extension of the pathway by further […]