A Japanese biotech threaded a catheter into a failing heart and delivered iPS-derived muscle without opening the chest. Inside the world's first trial of its kind.
Telomelysin, a common-cold virus reprogrammed to destroy cancer cells, has won the world's first approval for esophageal cancer. It took 35 years, one surgeon's idea, and an Okayama University startup pushing through a regulatory maze.
For 15 years, donor cells vanished when grown across species. A Tokyo-Stanford team found why: the host embryo's first immune cells were eating them alive. The path to lab-grown organs, explained.
Shionogi has launched EndeavorRide, Japan's first prescription video game for childhood ADHD, covered by public health insurance. We unpack the Phase 3 results, the rise and fall of the US original EndeavorRx, and why a healthcare system can decide whether a game-as-medicine lives or dies.
Cold has killed living things since long before humans had fire. But what pulls the trigger inside the cell stayed murky. A Japanese team studying nematodes points to an unlikely suspect: copper.
Why did Yamasa, a soy sauce maker founded in 1645, end up in pharmaceuticals? The story of how umami research led to nucleotides, and to pseudouridine, a key ingredient in mRNA vaccines.
In 2004, virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka titled a dialogue A Pandemic Will Definitely Come. COVID proved him right 16 years later, and the bird flu he truly feared, H5N1, is now spreading in cattle and people. A 20-year reckoning.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Chiba University have developed ETE, a method that mass-produces hundreds of thousands of uniform cell-loaded capsules using only a bench-top vortex mixer and temperature control. A look at why it lowers the barrier for drug discovery and regenerative medicine, and how it compares with America's organoid industry.
A meniscus regeneration technology developed at Japan's Institute of Science Tokyo has been approved as Seibiscus, the country's first regenerative medicine product for meniscus injury. We explain how it uses a patient's own stem cells to repair the knee, what the Phase III trial showed, and how it compares with regenerative medicine ventures in South Korea and the US.
Kyoto University spinoff Toregem Biopharma kicks off Phase 2 trials this summer for TRG035, the world's first regenerative tooth drug, after raising an additional ¥850 million ($5.3M). Twenty-four pediatric patients with severe congenital tooth agenesis will receive the antibody. Here is what the deal tells us about Japan's deep-tech biotech funding stack — and how a super-aging society is becoming a uniquely positioned market for medical innovation.
After a stroke, the brain repairs itself for about two months, then stops. A team from Science Tokyo, TMIMS, Kyushu University and Freiburg University has identified the protein responsible — ZFP384 — and developed an antisense drug that keeps the repair window open in mice. Published in Nature, the discovery could redraw what is possible for stroke survivors and other brain injuries.