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Tokyo—Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO: 6502) today announced that it entered into an agreement with Kawasaki City Institute for Public Health(KCIPH)on applying DNA-chip diagnostics to the recognition of bacteria responsible for outbreaks of food poisoning and bacterial enteric infections. Cultivating and identifying bacteria typically takes four to five days, but Toshiba's DNA based diagnostics cuts that to as short as two hours. The joint research will start on April 1 at KCIPH's facility in the Keihin-Rinkai Life Innovation Comprehensive Global Strategic Special Zone, Japan, and will bring together Toshiba's industry-leading capabilities in DNA chips and electrochemical DNA detection and analysis and KCIPH's know-how in life innovation. Through their work Toshiba and KCIPH will promote better food safety and enhanced public hygiene.

DNA-based electrochemical diagnosis draws on the latest advances in DNA to give care providers the ability to identify types and particular strains of bacteria and viruses very quickly. The bacteria which can be identified includes enterohemorrhagic escherichia coli, shigella, staphylococcus aureus, campylobacter, salmonella, vibrio parahaemolyticus and others.

KCIPH and Toshiba have already collaborated in developing a diagnostic system based on an electrochemical DNA detection chip, and the new agreement between the companies further promotes this goal.

Japan has hot humid summers and a culture of eating fresh food, conditions that are ideal for outbreaks of food poisoning and bacterial enteric infections. The new diagnostic system will complement efforts to promote safer handling of food by allowing early detection of any problem and enabling doctors to prescribe appropriate remedies at a very early stage of an outbreak.

Toshiba and KCIPH will continue to promote and refine development of DNA-chip detection of food poisoning and bacterial enteric infections and to develop systems that are even more operational and cost competitive. Moving forward, Toshiba will investigate deployment of its DNA electrochemical detection method in diverse areas, including identification of genetically modified food and early identification of livestock infections in order to contain outbreaks.

About Toshiba's electrochemical detection method

A DNA chip is a collection of DNA spots immobilized on a substrate, such as glass or a silicon chip, that can be used to genotype multiple regions of a genome by checking whether or not it binds with sample DNA.

Toshiba established itself as an important contributor to the biotech science that integrates techniques drawn from medicine and genomics, through its development of an electrochemical DNA chip that is able to analyze and type DNA sequences that can be used to identify genes. This charted a new direction in DNA chip development, which previously focused on fluorescence detection technology that used a laser to irradiate a sample and then measures the resulting fluorescence. Since this system is large and not easily portable, the chip and screening process were both expensive, making fluorescence detection impractical for real-world application outside the research lab.

Toshiba's in-vitro electrochemical detection methodology removes the need for the use of fluorescent (or other) labels in DNA detection, and offers much easier operation and shorter analysis time than currently available methodologies. The equipment required is also much more compact, integrates with IT technologies, and is more cost efficient. It has already been applied to identification of the human papilloma virus (HPV), the main cause of cervical cancer.

Outline of the joint research

Outline:	Development of simple auto detection technology on DNA-based electrochemical diagnosis to detect food poisoning and bacterial enteric infections
Term:	One year from April 1, 2013