The personalized health movement is getting an influential new player in Japan. Thermo Fisher Scientific announced this week it is pairing its know-how in mass spectrometry with the research skills of a couple of top scientists--Toshihide Nishimura, professor at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital and Gyorgy Marko-Varga, professor at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital and Lund University, Sweden--to create a new Biomarker Researcher Center in Tokyo.
Thermo Fisher will contribute the expertise it has garnered at BRIMS--its Biomarker Research Initiatives in Mass Spectrometry project--along with its network of collaborators to the new venture. The scientists will explore the correlation of protein expression and quantitative regulation for major disease categories like lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cardiovascular disease to discover biomarker candidates related to drug response.
"In Japan there is an urgent need to develop more targeted disease detection and treatments for a rapidly growing patient population," says Murray Wigmore, senior director of commercial operations in Japan. "The Tokyo Biomarker Research Center will be developed as the model to replicate the excellence of BRIMS in international markets."
- here's the Thermo Fisher release
- here's the story from Genetic Engineering News