Participation in the Clinical Research on the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

KOTAI Biotechnologies, Inc. (CEO, Kazuo Yamashita, hereafter referred to as KOTAI) will be participating in the clinical research on the coronavirus disease(COVID-19) , which is an exploratory study on the mechanism of onset and severity of COVID-19 (hereafter referred to as the Clinical Research), based on a request from the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (hereafter referred to as the NIID). The Clinical Research is scheduled to be conducted as a support program, the development of diagnostic method, by the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (hereafter referred to as AMED) after the year of 2020.

COVID-19 was firstly reported in the People’s Republic of China in December 2019 and its epidemic has spread throughout the world, the rapid research and development is quite necessary. However, the analysis of the characteristics and pathogenicity of this virus is not yet sufficient, and the development of diagnostic methods needs to be promoted urgently in order to understand the real situations of this infectious disease and provide appropriate medical care.

In addition to NIID and KOTAI, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, the Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Yokohama Municipal Citizen’s Hospital, Osaka University and RIKEN will be also involved in the Clinical Research. KOTAI will conduct the B- and T-cell immune repertoire analysis of COVID-19 patients in collaboration with NIID and clarify the COVID-19 specific immune responses and the relationship between clinical indicators, such as infection and severity, and immune repertoire, in order to establish the basic technology of the rapid diagnostic method for COVID-19.

KOTAI will accept and analyze samples from the patients preprocessed and ruled out the risk of the infection, by NIID.