The Biomedical Group of Takara Shuzo Co., Ltd. has agreed to contribute $2 million in total to establish the Takara SBG (Shuzo Biomedical Group) Endowed Chair of Bioinformatics at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. This contribution may facilitate Takara Biomedical Group's access to advanced technologies of proteomics and bioinformatics in the US, resulting in a new Takara's service of technologies related to the fields.

The Biomedical Group has entered into a strategic collaboration with GeneFormatics Incorporated (abbreviated by GFI) of San Diego, CA, January 2001. Under the terms of the agreement, the Biomedical Group has started to commercialize GFI's proprietary technologies and services for the rapid analysis and prediction of protein structure and function. One of advanced technologies of GFI is a high-throughput nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy technology to determine three-dimensional structures of proteins. The NMR-related technology has been developed by Professor Montelione, who is one of the scientific advisors of GFI and also a professor of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The university is widely recognized as one of centers of excellence in proteomics and bioinformatics, including research activities of Dr. Montelione in 3-D structural analysis of proteins by NMR analyses. Takara Biomedical Group expects that the chair will support work to expand and enrich the area of bioinformatics and proteomics at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and present opportunities to access information on new technologies developed and intellectual properties.

Proteins regulate most biological processes, and thus have been the target of the majority of drug discovery efforts. The Human Genome Project and other genome sequencing efforts generate only information of amino acid sequences of a large number of proteins, providing little information about a protein's physical structure or biological function. Without knowledge of a protein function, its potential as a target of drug discovery remains normally unclear. Accordingly, huge data of genome analyses will become meaningful after functions of encoded proteins are determined. For this purpose, advance in proteomics and bioinformatics are needed, but research activities of bioinformatics and proteomics in Japan are not enough compared with the US. Consequently, Takara Biomedical Group decided to fund the chair and introduce technologies of proteomics and bioinformatics newly developed by the chair. The endowed chair is supported by the donation from Takara Biomedical Group and the foundation from the state government.

This article is translated from the press release in Japanese for your convenience.