Thermo Fisher Scientific collaboration to establish Tokyo Biomarker Research Centre

Published: 26-Jul-2010

Focus will be on biomarker discovery and quantification, disease mechanisms, therapeutic drug monitoring and disease pathophysiology


Thermo Fisher Scientific has announced a landmark 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) Centre, Toshihide Nishimura, professor at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital, and Gyorgy Marko-Varga, professor at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital and Lund University, Sweden, is to establish and support a new Biomarker Research Centre in Tokyo, Japan.

The new Centre will focus on biomarker discovery and quantification, disease mechanisms, therapeutic drug monitoring and disease pathophysiology, and will have dedicated laboratories based at Tokyo Medical. 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 BRIMS Centre is the archetype for the planned Tokyo Biomarker Research Centre. 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 extensive 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, senior director of commercial operations in Japan, Thermo Fisher Scientific.

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.

About the collaborators

Professor Toshihide Nishimura, Guest Professor, Department of Thoracic Surgery, Tokyo Medical University (Professor, Clinical Proteome Center during 2002-06), Tokyo Medical University, focuses on mass spectrometric development for clinical applications. In close collaboration with major medical institutes and hospitals in Japan, he has conducted many clinical research studies of biomarkers for lung disease and prostate cancer. Dr Nishimura constructed an extensive network for clinical and biomarker research in Japan, and conducted extensive protein biomarker discovery research involving 52 lung cancer centres in Japan. Currently he is the board member of both the Japan Human Proteome Organisation (JHUPO) and the Japanese Society for Clinical Proteomics (JSCP).

Gyorgy Marko-Varga is professor at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital and Lund University, Sweden, and senior Drug Discovery/Development scientist at AstraZeneca. His current research is focused on the development of novel diagnostic assays and platforms, and interfacing high resolution separation with mass spectrometry, to build an understanding of the mode of drug action and disease mechanisms for lung cancer and COPD. To that end, he is building new research groups involving collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry, academia and clinical hospitals. Working with Dr Nishimura, he participated in protein biomarker discovery research involving 52 lung cancer centers in Japan. One of his major new challenges is responsibility for the 'Big Three' study: Lung Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease and COPD, which involves 400,000 patients in Sweden.

The BRIMS Centre, a Thermo Fisher Scientific centre of excellence located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, opened in 2004 with a mission to support the development of methodologies and applications for protein biomarker identification and verification. Equipped with a full complement of Thermo Scientific mass spectrometers and staffed by a team of scientists with expertise in mass spectrometry, protein techniques and informatics, the BRIMS Center also develops leading software tools for proteomic research.

For more information about Thermo Fisher Scientific’s extensive line of mass spectrometers, please visit www.thermoscientific.com/ms.

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