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Research Achievements Towards Company Founding Published in Cell Reports Methods

We are pleased to announce that the results of our collaborative research conducted as Japan Science and Technology Agency’s grant project (JST START: Nov2020-Mar2022), aimed at founding Cosomil, have been published in ‘Cell Reports Methods’. This research, a joint effort by the University of Tokyo, RIKEN, and Nippon Medical School, focused on the development of a platform for the semi-automated synthesis of fluorogenic substrate probes and a methodology for analyzing the activity of various blood proteolytic enzymes at the single-molecule level. Moreover, we have revealed abnormalities in enzyme activities such as elastase, CD13, and DPP4 in the blood plasma of patients with stage I-II pancreatic cancer.

This achievement marks a significant step forward compared to conventional protein function analysis. Unlike conventional methods that analyze enzyme activity in large groups of molecules ranging from 106 to 109, our method reveals the unique characteristics of each enzyme at the single-molecule level.

We are applying this knowledge to advance the societal implementation of our Single-molecule Enzyme Activity-based Liquid Biopsy technology, contributing to the early detection of diseases.

Article Information
Journal: Cell Reports Methods
Article Title: Identification of activity-based biomarkers for early-stage pancreatic tumors in blood using single-molecule enzyme activity screening
DOI:10.1016/j.crmeth.2023.100688.

Development of Diagnostics Method Utilizing Single-molecule Enzyme Activity-based Enzyme Profiling