We hereby announce that q‡research on commercialization of the cyclopedic library of murine knockout ES cellsqˆ was finally recognized on August 26, 2005 as q‡the support project for establishment of business-academia collaborative new business,qˆ being part of Kobe R&D support projects.

Kobe Prefecture announced its project, q‡Hyogo 21 century, the project of industries creation,qˆ supporting associations for each step such as research start-up, product development and establishment of business, with the aim of creating leading industries including a growing industry cluster that would support the Hyogo economy of the 21st century.

As part of this project, Hyogo enforces q‡the support project for establishment of business-academia collaborative new industriesqˆ in order to promote the practical use of university-industry cooperation or business collaboration through ingenious technical seeds. We applied for said support project with the intent of performing q‡the research on commercialization of cyclopedic library of murine knockout (KO) ES cellsqˆ cooperating with National Institute of Radiological Sciences.

As aforementioned recognized research, q‡the research of commercialization on the cyclopedic library of murine KO-ES cells,qˆ we will examine the gene expression profiling of murine ES cells by using q‡high coverage expression profiling (HiCEP) analysis, demonstrate the usability of murine KO-ES cells as research tools for elucidating genetic interactions, and intend to commercialize the murine KO-ES cell library. In addition, we seek to catalog information on genetic interactions of murine KO-ES cells, based on the findings of said research, and market that information to pharmaceutical companies and academies.

The effects of said agreement on our future business performance are unknown, but the performance projection for the fiscal term ending March 2006 thus far remains unchanged.