A kit that uses a finding by Shimadzu Corp. employee and Nobel laureate Koichi Tanaka and his colleagues to detect cancer and diabetes will go on sale around October, company officials said Tuesday.
Using a reagent and a device to sense proteins that increase in blood in the event of cancer or diabetes, the method will help with early diagnosis of the diseases and in the development of new drugs, the officials said.
The method involves blood samples being analyzed in a mass spectrometer, according to the daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun.
The company hopes to price the kit, intended for sale to drug companies and universities, at less than 160,000 yen, the newspaper said.
It was developed by a six-member team, led by Osamu Nishimura, the company's senior fellow, that included Tanaka, also a fellow, the officials said.
The finding will appear Wednesday in a U.S. academic magazine, they said.