Komyoji temple

Komyoji temple located in Nagaokakyo city, Kyoto, is famous for beautiful autumn leaves. In the compound of the temple, there is so called “autumn-leaves-path”, which is like a tunnel of red leaves! Access: Take a Hankyu bus from JR Nagaoka-kyo station or Hankyu Nagaoka Tenjin station. The Osaka Prefectural Government announced the establishment of a new cancer cell bank for culture and storage of living cancer cells. In March 2017, the Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases will be transferred from Higashinari Ward to Chuo Ward, Osaka City. The new cancer cell bank will be established as part of the new medical center. Generally, cancer cell banks store frozen dead cells. The new cancer cell bank, however, will launch the world’s first project of systematic storage of living cells using technology developed by the medical center. 　For cancer cells cultured using conventional technology, in principle cancer cells are isolated from tissues and the isolated single cells are then cultured. In this culturing process, cancer cells lose their intrinsic characteristics and how they respond to drugs cannot be examined in detail. 　The medical center developed original technology and obtained a patent for it. Using this patented technology, clumps of living cancer cells can now be cultured, thus enabling the cells to be cultured and proliferate while their intrinsic characteristics are maintained. In experiments, cancer cells cultured in this manner can be used as cancer cells produced in a living body, enabling the responses of cancer cells to drugs and genetic abnormalities to be examined more accurately. 　Because the medical center performs as many as 4,000 cancer surgeries a year, it is positioned as one of the nation’s most prestigious cancer treatment centers. The center intends to culture various cancer cells obtained from patients, store the cultured cancer cells in the bank, and provide them to various domestic and foreign private companies and researchers. This project is expected to contribute toward further advancing cancer prevention, and the discovery of new treatments and drugs. Read more...