Providing the world's most advanced mass site meter that simultaneously detects 50 kinds of proteins from a single cell.
First of all, please tell us about your business.
The Company is a Japanese branch of a research equipment and reagent sales company headquartered in San Francisco, United States. Our main business is the sale of research analytical instruments and consumables and after-sales service. The analyzers we handle include multi-sample and multi-item analyzers, mainly PCR systems, and CyTOF, a mass site meter that can simultaneously detect multiple proteins from a single cell. Currently, in addition to setting up a business office in Nihonbashikodenmacho, we have also opened a lab in Mitsui Link Lab Kasai, and are actually operating mass site meters.
Your products are known as state-of-the-art equipment, but what are your technical features?
Our mass site meter is characterized by the ability to detect 50 proteins at the same time in a single measurement. When examining the types of proteins expressed in cells and their expression status, we visualize them using antibodies that bind specifically to each protein, but in our case, by using 50 kinds of metals as identification markers, we realized simultaneous measurement of 50 kinds of proteins. A more comprehensive analysis is possible compared to the conventional method of using fluorescent dye for identification markers (10 to 20 proteins can be detected in a single measurement).
What kind of situations are your products being used?
Our main customers are academia and pharmaceutical companies in Japan, but recently they have been widely used in research applications in the field of cancer immunity. Today's mainstream immune checkpoint inhibitors are found to be divided into patients with high therapeutic effects and those with low therapeutic effects. Therefore, research is progressing around the world to examine the cells of patients with different therapeutic effects and to search for the expression of proteins (biomarkers) strongly correlated with therapeutic effects, and our mass cytometers are playing an active role in the search. If it leads to the discovery of markers that can predict therapeutic effects in advance, more efficient cancer immunotherapy is expected.
We want to realize "unexpected discovery even researchers" by combining our analytical instruments and AI.
What kind of activities are you doing at Mitsui Link Lab Kasai?
Mitsui Link Lab Kasai offers a contract analysis service for mass site meters as a trial from the perspective of gaining knowledge of our technical capabilities. We also support lab tours, and if you come to the venue, you will see the actual mass site meter in operation, and we will also demonstrate cell analysis using the samples you bring. In that respect, it also serves as a showroom.
Please tell us about your outlook for the future.
First of all, through our activities at Mitsui Link Lab Kasai, we would like to provide opportunities for Japanese researchers to feel closer to our technology. The laboratory tour is currently only about once every two to three months, but in the future, we will also invite academia and pharmaceutical companies to Mitsui Link Lab Kasai to test their experiments and learn that they will achieve more results than they expected.
In the future, we will aim to further expand the market by combining our equipment and artificial intelligence. In the past, researchers observed only changes in molecules with star-shaped stars in advance, but as in our mass site meter, dozens of changes can be measured at the same time, there is a high possibility that researchers will not predict, and using AI technology will enable us to discover all changes. The development of multivariate analysis using AI technology (a method for analyzing the relevance of multiple data and analyzing comprehensive interpretations) is progressing around the world, and we expect more opportunities for our equipment to play an active role in the future.
The feature of Mitsui Link Lab is that it understands the challenges of the lab without explaining it.
Where was the decisive factor for opening our own lab in Mitsui Link Lab Kasai?
Originally, our base is located in Nihonbashikodenmacho, but from the beginning, we wanted to open a separate laboratory from our office. However, because the installation of waste heat ducts is essential for the operation of mass site meters, and the handling of cells for analysis, the location cannot be said to be good anywhere. So when I was looking for a candidate site, I learned about the existence of Mitsui Link Lab Kasai. Mitsui Link Lab Kasai is familiar with what is needed in research and what the lab needs, and it was the point that we decided to move in.
What kind of impressions do you have when you actually opened a lab?
I think the wonderful thing about Mitsui Link Lab is that it is familiar with businesses that are different from those of general companies like our company, and that they can understand the situation immediately without having to give detailed explanations. For example, you are familiar with the lab's specific circumstances, such as the rules for disposing of infectious waste, and if you consult with the operating staff via email, you will return a reply immediately. To put it all, there is no sharpness, but we always respond to various issues in our daily work as usual, so we have created an environment where we can work on daily work as a matter of course.
Finally, what are your expectations for Mitsui Link Lab in the future?
We look forward to planning events so that more people can learn about our activities. In particular, in the case of our company, we would like to not only sell analytical instruments, but also aim to serve as a partner who can engage in broad discussions with researchers and share information with each other. To do so, it is necessary to have more researchers visit Mitsui Link Lab Kasai and actually see the equipment. In addition, if there is an exchange meeting between companies moving into the same lab, I would like to actively participate. By understanding each other's work through exchange meetings, I would like to lead to a further leap forward.