Thermo Fisher Scientific has announced a collaboration that aims to introduce mass-spectrometry-based workflows and technologies into Japan to advance personalised medicine and healthcare.
The intent of the collaboration between Thermo Fisher's Biomarker Research Initiatives in Mass Spectrometry (Brims) Center, Toshihide Nishimura, professor at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital, Gyorgy Marko-Varga, professor at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital and Lund University in Sweden is to establish and support a biomarker research centre in Tokyo, Japan.
The new centre will focus on biomarker discovery and quantification, disease mechanisms, therapeutic drug monitoring and disease pathophysiology.
The Brims Center is the archetype for the coming Tokyo Biomarker Research Center.
The goal is to bring to the collaboration Thermo Fisher's expertise in mass-spectrometry-based assays, workflow development and technology integration as well as its network of collaborators engaged in similar research.
'In Japan, there is an urgent need to develop more targeted disease detection and treatments for a rapidly growing patient population,' said Murray Wigmore, Thermo Fisher Scientific's senior director of commercial operations in Japan.
The Tokyo Biomarker Center will have dedicated laboratories based at Tokyo Medical.
The correlation of protein expression and quantitative regulation for diseases of key concern in Japan such as lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and cardiovascular disease will be performed to discover biomarker candidates related to drug response.
The research centre will also house an archive with comprehensive tissue and blood sample collections, along with access to complementary clinical and demographic data.
The archive will include samples from drug responders and non-responders and material from clinical studies performed in Scandinavia and other European countries.
