Aim to realize "Precision Health"
GE Healthcare Japan Co., Ltd. and Daiwa House Industry Co., Ltd announced their collaboration to establish a platform for GE Healthcare at Tonomachi Life Science Open Innovation hub at King SkyFront "District A" to commercialize regenerative medicine healthcare.

By introducing this platform of GE Healthcare, which extensive worldwide networks and experience in industrialization, the aim is to shorten taken for practical applications of cell and gene therapy and contribute to the creation of global business from King SkyFront in regenerative medicine and realize "Precision Health".

GE Healthcare has a vision of "Precision Health" to provide more effective and higher quality care suitable for each individual at a lower cost in a wide range of fields ranging from medical checkups to diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis.

Regarding the establishment of treatment methods suitable for individual patients, which is one of the important elements of "Precision Health", with more than 900 regenerative medicine clinical trials (including cell therapy and gene therapy) since 2016, such trials are increasing, however, solutions to satisfy the demand for manufacturing methods and commercial development have been limited.

In this collaboration, GE Healthcare will provide know-how to the platform on research, commercialization, and human resource development. In addition, Daiwa House Industry will provide facilities and equipment that complies with Japanese regulations for regenerative medicine and will support the rapid transition from regenerative medicine research and clinical trial manufacturing to commercialized manufacturing. Daiwa House Industry will also build a foundation for ecosystems for regenerative medicine in Japan to contribute to the provision of solutions conforming to cGMP (current Good Manufacturing Practice), creation of business opportunities, and elimination of manpower shortages in the industry.

GE Health Care Regenerative Medicine Solutions
GE Healthcare offers a variety of solutions to contribute to the manufacture of products such as regenerative medicine and development of cell processing technologies by making full use of the biopharmaceutical manufacturing technology and stable supply system that it has cultivated to date. Many of the manufacturing processes of cell and gene therapy products are manual operations and difficult to standardize, and there are many problems such as maintaining sterile conditions, batch record management, scale up and others. To solve these problems GE Health Care is proposing a series of cell processing methods for reproducible manufacturing of cell and gene therapy products including cell culture devices, cell washing concentrator, cell freezing / thawing devices and cell culture media reagents for single use products corresponding to cGMP production. In addition, as a platform solution that integrates these series of products with a digital automation system, combines process development necessary for scaling up from research to commercialization, training of engineers, etc., and provides it according to customer's needs, GE Health Care has developed “FlexFactory for Cell Therapy” and started providing it in January 2018.

Activities of Daiwa House Industry in King Skyfront 'A District'
Daiwa House Industry acquired King SkyFront 'A District' in June 2014 and signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding on King SkyFront Town Development by Kawasaki City and Daiwa House Industry'. In order to create a town as "an international strategic base where state-of-the-art life science industries and research institutes gather," Daiwa House Industry began developing with the theme of creating "bustling and exchange functions". This district consists of a site area of 4.6 ha, one hotel and five research buildings: two completed research buildings, three research buildings to be built in the future.
The research building in "District A" is a state-of-the-art research center for research and development of state-of-the-art medical technology, medical equipment, including research on regeneration and cell medicine that is expected to grow greatly. Daiwa House Industry has proposed non-asset business schemes that can be used without owning a research facility by companies that are active in advanced healthcare fields, so that companies wanting to enter this area can smoothly start business operations.

In addition, in order to attract people for a lively open townscape, Daiwa House Industry build a "promenade" linking two existing parks adjacent to the area to the north and south, taking into consideration the pedestrian passage in the premises. On the first floor of each research building, there are community spaces and showrooms facing the "promenade" and Daiwa House Industry is collaborating with Kawasaki City to develop areas where researchers, students, local residents and others can easily gather and interact.