Ricoh announces strategic business partnership with Elixirgen Scientific
TOKYO, Japan, 20 June 2019 – Ricoh Company, Ltd., (Tokyo, Japan) has announced it has entered into a strategic business partnership with Elixirgen Scientific, Inc., (Baltimore, Maryland, USA), to develop innovative biomedical products and services that support drug discovery based on cell differentiation1 technology.
1 Differentiation: The process in which a cell becomes specialized in order to perform a specific function, as in case of a liver cell, a blood cell or a neuron.
2 Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cell: Cell with pluripotency that can introduce several kinds of genes into somatic cells and can differentiate into many cells like ES cells, and has self-replication ability that can be maintained even after division and proliferation.
3 Cell-chip: Living cells in a well, which is used for drug safety and efficacy testing before any testing on humans or animals.
4 Quick-Tissue™ Technology: A revolutionary new technology to generate human cells, tissues, and organs using potent cocktails of transcription factors. These cocktails transform cells into high-quality tissues in a scalable, speedy manner. Excellent transcription are using two different ways: synthetic mRNAs or Sendai virus vectors.
5 Embryonic stem cell: Pluripotent cell that is produced by obtaining and culturing a part of blastocyst stage embryos with slightly advanced development from fertilized eggs of animals.
6 Mature cell: Cell that has completed natural growth or development.
About Elixirgen
Elixirgen is a biotech company specializing in stem cell technology located at the Science + Technology Park at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. In the stem cell industry, the length of time of differentiation from iPS/ES cells to specific cells together with low efficiency are factors that effect cost. Elixirgen Scientific has succeeded in commercializing technology that can shorten the speed of differentiation induction to approximately one week. For further information, please visit www.elixirgen.com.
| About Ricoh |
Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services enabling individuals to work smarter. For more than 80 years, Ricoh has been driving innovation and is a leading provider of document management solutions, IT services, communications services, commercial and industrial printing, digital cameras, and industrial systems.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group operates in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2020, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 2,008 billion yen (approx. 18.5 billion USD).
For further information, please visit www.ricoh-europe.com
For further information, please contact:Ricoh Europe PLC
Jack Gibson
Tel: +44 (0) 203 033 3766
E-mail: media@ricoh-europe.com
Homepage: www.ricoh-europe.com
Join us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ricoheurope
Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ricoheurope
Follow us on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/company/ricoh-europe
Visit the Ricoh media centre at: www.ricoh-europe.com/press