Therabest Japan concluded advisory agreements with Prof. Megumu Saito and Associate Prof. Akitsu Hotta of the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto University, as of September 1st, 2022. We will collaborate with the advisors in research of the development of iPS cell differentiation induction technology and low antigenicity by genome editing and further advance our iPSC-derived cell therapy platform technology in compliant with FDA standard.
Prof. Megumu Saito took up the post of professor of Clinical Application department at CiRA as of May, 2022 and started research focusing on pathological analysis and development of therapy using iPS cells specific to rare intractable diseases. The main target diseases in his research are: immune disorders (immunodeficiency diseases, autoinflammatory syndrome) and hematopoietic diseases (bone marrow failure, genomic instability syndrome) and neuronal disorders. With regard to some of these diseases, he also reproduces disease specific phenotypes in order to elucidate the pathophysiological mechanism and identify compounds which can ameliorate the phenotype.
Associate Prof. Akitsu Hotta has been at the post of Clinical Application department at CiRA since May, 2022. His laboratory is engaged in development of a range of technologies with the intractable disease muscular dystrophy as its main target. The immune rejection due to mismatch of HLA haplotypes is a major concern of his laboratory. His team has developed a method of genome editing selective HLA genes of iPS cells in order to reduce such risks of immune rejection.
