Shimadzu fully enters the field of smart cells with the goal of building Japan's first biofoundry

On November 30, Shimadzu invested in Bacchus Bio innovation Co., Ltd. (Nada Ward, Kobe City), a venture company originating from Kobe University, and signed a business partnership agreement. Bacchus possesses advanced biotechnology and has strengths in the field of "smart cells," which combines biotechnology with digital technology. With this investment in Bacchus, Shimadzu aims to fully enter the field of smart cells and build a biofoundry in Japan.

Smart cells are cells with artificially modified genes that allow for efficient mass production of targeted beneficial substances. Combining "biotechnology," such as genome editing and genome synthesis, with "digital technology," such as Atficial Intelligence and Information Technology, is expected to improve production efficiency for substances that were previously difficult to mass produce using conventional methods. This will result in technological innovation in several areas, including pharmaceuticals, foods, new materials, and the environment.

The utilization of smart cells is also considered essential from the perspective of "decarbonization." This is because smart cells will help us stop using fossil fuels by transitioning from manufacturing based on petroleum or natural gas to manufacturing based on biotechnology. Moreover, if conventional production methods that consume large quantities of energy can be replaced with biotechnology-based production, it would result in reduced CO₂ emissions, leading to "decarbonization."

Nevertheless, industrialization still has many challenges, such as "the ability to quickly and accurately confirm whether the intended substances were actually produced" and "the ability to mass produce new substances created in a laboratory at high quality levels."

In addition, several large companies, mainly in the United States, have commercialized the systems for developing smart cells to produce targeted substances (biofoundries). This means that it has become difficult for Japanese companies to freely use new substances produced by smart cells owing to high outsourcing costs and complicated agreements with these companies.

Shimadzu has been contributing to the field of smart cells by utilizing analytical measurement technology based on liquid chromatographs (LC) and mass spectrometers (MS). Since 2016, Shimadzu has been engaged in the 5-year NEDO project in collaboration with Kobe University, in which they have achieved "shorter pretreatment times" and "higher analytical accuracy" for analyzing metabolites from cells.

Bacchus, in which Shimadzu has invested currently, is a bio-venture company spun off from Kobe University. Based on the technology developed in the NEDO project, Professor Akihiko Kondo, Vice-President of Kobe University and Dean of the Graduate School of Science, Technology, and Innovation (Director of Bacchus), and Professor Tomohisa Hasunuma, Director of the Engineering Biology Research Center at Kobe University (Bacchus Technical Advisor) are working on a contract development service for creating smart cells tailored to client needs. In addition, Bacchus has provided highly original advanced technologies in collaboration with BioPalette Co., Ltd. and Synplogen Co., Ltd., both of which are also bio-venture companies originating from Kobe University, focusing on genome editing and DNA synthesizing, respectively.

Based on this business partnership agreement, in January 2022, Shimadzu will start working with Bacchus on multiple areas, including "instrument improvements for achieving higher throughput." Moreover, one employee will be stationed at Bacchus for solving various issues in the field of smart cells.

Shimadzu aims to build Japan's first biofoundry in partnership with Bacchus for serving the biotechnology-related market, which is expected to be worth 300 trillion yen by 2030. Through joint research, Shimadzu will also identify advanced needs in the field of smart cells and address these in product development as early as possible, thus solving challenges in society.