News

The “smart cell industry” program of NEDO (2016-2020) aims to produce industrial materials from plants and microorganisms in economically viable yields based on metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. The five new topics (2019-2020) are Microbial production of...

The group of Akihiko KONDO at Kobe University has used computer simulations, newly designed metabolic pathways and introduction of an engineered silkworm enzyme into E. coli to produce tetrahydropapaveroline (THP), a precursor compound of various benzylisoquinoline...

RIKEN held an opening ceremony on April 19, 2019, for a collaborative laboratory on natural products and chemical biology at Hangzhou Future Science and Technology Park. The collaborative laboratory will identify useful substances from natural compounds collected from...

ToMMo established after the Great Eastern Earthquake so far has analyzed whole genomes of 5000 healthy local people and about 100,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Since 2016, CiRA and ToMMo started collaborative research and established healthy iPS cells...

Under a NEDO contract, the team of Yasushi ODORU at Kansai University has succeeded to substitute the conventional platinum catalyst for  organosilicon synthesis by a catalyst based on iron oxide nanoparticles coated with DMF. The new catalyst has high...

The device allows for rapid, high-precision genetic field testing, for instance early inspection of food poisoning by bacteria. The device uses a compact fluorescence detector which applies  the "SELFOC" microlens developed by the company in the 2000s as a...

The method is based on the "embryonic organ niche method" developed by the Tokyo Jikei Medical University and others. In this method, human cells are implanted at the organ development site (organ niche) of a baby pig and grown to a normal organ. Nephron precursor...

Spiber, a spin-out of Keio University and successful in the scale-up of spider silk production, has teamed up with Aderans, a Tokyo-based wig-maker. The two companies plan to jointly develop a new structural material for human wigs based on recombinant spider silk....

The company is a spin-off of the University of Tokyo, using the research results of Osamu NUREKI. They develop in vivo gene therapy using adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors for single gene diseases. https://www.j-startup.go.jp/en/startups/017_edigene.html

Gene Technos Science Co. shareholders have approved to make Cell Technology, acquired in January 2019, a wholly-owned subsidiary. Cell Technology has a partnership with over 2000 medical institutions across Japan to provide services for dental pulp-derived and other...

A joint research team of Hitachi and RIKEN have successfully used a completely closed  automatic cell culture system for culturing RPE cell sheets derived from human iPS cells. using a culture device. By analysis of various markers it was demonstrated that...

Hiromitsu SUGAKAWA and colleagues at RIKEN Bioresources Research Center have treated an aqueous silk protein solution with tyrosinase, thereby converting tyrosine residues in silk to DOPA. Amino acid analysis by ninhydrin confirmed that the treated silk contained...