Joint Research on the analysis of immune profile of COVID-19 patients.

Suita— KOTAI Biotechnologies, Inc. (CEO, Kazuo Yamashita, hereafter referred to as KOTAI) today announced that it has entered a Joint Research Agreement with the National Institute of Infectious Diseases (hereafter referred to as the NIID), Osaka University, and Shionogi & Co., Ltd. (hereafter referred to as Shionogi) regarding the analysis of the immune profiles of COVID-19 patients.

Since the fiscal year of 2019, KOTAI has participated in a COVID-19-related project titled “Development of pathological diagnostic methods for congenital infections and unexplained illness of possible infectious etiology” (Chief: Dr. Tadaki Suzuki of NIID), which is supported by the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) . In addition to this project, we will implement the Joint Research Agreement based on our consensus that deeper investigation of the immune responses in COVID-19 patients towards better understanding of this infectious disease is extremely important in advancing the development of future diagnostic methods or vaccines.

Much of the host immune response to the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) infection remains unknown. In this Joint Research, KOTAI in cooperation with the Department of Immunology, NIID (Director: Dr. Yoshimasa Takahashi) and the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Differentiation, Immunology Frontier Research Center at Osaka University (Professor Tomohiro Kurosaki), and Shionogi will comprehensively analyze immune cells collected from COVID-19 patients. The analysis will be conducted from the viewpoint of protection from infection and then followed-up over the long term. We will obtain detailed information of the immunity acquired by COVID-19 patients in Japan and utilize it for the development of future diagnostic methods or vaccines.

KOTAI is a startup company founded in 2016 based on the research achievements at Immunology Frontier Research Center at Osaka University. KOTAI will work diligently to apply their proprietary bioinformatics and information/structure analysis technologies to SARS-CoV-2 and contribute to bringing the pandemic to a quick end.