NAGOYA, Japan - May 8, 2020 - Medical and Biological Laboratories Co., Ltd. (MBL), a JSR Life Sciences company, announced today that it has launched an in vitro diagnostic kit for the genetic disease Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). The MEBCDX AAV9 test kit, which was licensed from Quest Diagnostics, was approved on April 27 by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) as a companion diagnostic (CDx) kit for the SMA gene therapy ZolgensmaTM (onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi) launched by Novartis International AG. The test kit will enable laboratory testing through LSI Medience Corporation starting today. 

NAGOYA, Japan - March 23, 2020 - Medical and Biological Laboratories Co., Ltd. (MBL), a JSR Life Sciences company, announced today that its subsidiary company, G&G Science Co., Ltd., has successfully completed development of a real-time PCR assay kit for “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” (SARS-CoV-2). The kit was evaluated with clinical samples provided by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (NIID). NIID and the Japan Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) today published that the results of testing with the kit corresponded 100 percent to those of the current NIID system on both positive and negative agreement rates. Therefore, starting immediately, the kit can be used not only for emergency testing being executed under the Infectious Diseases Control Law of Japan, but also for the clinical testing for the coverage of public medical insurance.

Tokyo, Japan – January 30, 2018 – JSR Corporation has been granted an exclusive license for intellectual property from Keio University for the treatment and diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). JSR then granted exclusive licenses of the key intellectual property to BiomX Ltd., a microbiome drug discovery company developing customized phage therapies, to develop and commercialize phage therapies based on the intellectual property.