Thermo Fisher Scientific Announces Collaboration to Establish New Tokyo Biomarker Research Center

07-28-2010: Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. announced a collaboration that aims to introduce mass spectrometry-based workflows and technologies into Japan to advance personalized medicine and healthcare. The intent of the collaboration between Thermo Fisher's Biomarker Research Initiatives in Mass Spectrometry (BRIMS) Center and 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 Center in Tokyo, Japan. The new Center 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 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 Tokyo Biomarker Research Center will be developed as the model to replicate the excellence of BRIMS in international markets."

The aim is for the collaboration to result in the Tokyo Biomarker Center which 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 research center 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 responder and non-responders, and material from clinical studies performed in Scandinavia and other European countries.