Cell Innovator has a strong focus on the local scientific community in Kyushu area of Japan. With an open mind to new technologies and platforms, Cell Innovator is actively seeking collaborations with industry innovators to play a role in bridging the gap between research methodologies and scientific applications. Since 2011, Cell Innovator has co-authored over 40 scientific papers.

MGI spoke with Kaori Yasuda, the CEO of Cell Innovator, recently about their user experience with MGI instruments DNBSEQ-G400RS Genetic Sequencer* and MGISP-100RS Automated Sample Preparation System since 2019.

Prof. Kuhara, the Director of Cell Innovator (left) and Kaori Yasuda, the CEO of Cell Innovator (right)

MGI: What type of projects are you running on MGI platforms DNBSEQ-G400RS* and MGISP-100RS?

Kaori Yasuda: We are mainly running RNA-seq analysis projects on the instruments. Our main business portfolio is to provide one-stop total solution from experimental design and consultation, RNA extraction, sequencing to data analysis.

MGI: Why did you choose MGI platform? What are the key differences that you have achieved through working with MGI?

Kaori Yasuda: MGI can provide the same quality results at a more effective and labor-saving way based on its innovative technology. We had been sending all received samples to service providers before we installed MGI's DNBSEQ-G400RS* and MGISP-100RS. The installation changed and stretched our business area and enabled us to provide one-stop service.

MGI: How is MGI sequencing platform DNBSEQ^TM supporting your projects?

Kaori Yasuda: MGI sequencing platform can help to reduce the total costing including maintenance cost, operation cost, and labor cost, making it possible to propose an attractive RNA-seq service to customers at a low cost.

MGI: How is your experience with MGISP-100RS Automated Sample Preparation System?

Kaori Yasuda: There are many preparation steps that we need to prepare by ourselves, while MGISP-100RS Automated Sample Preparation System is an automated workstation specialized for high-throughput sequencing library preparation. Integrating 8 channel pipettes, MGISP-100RS processes samples in batches, reduces the total costs, and significantly enhances the overall efficiency in the laboratory.

MGI: Will you consider long-term partnership with MGI? And why?

Kaori Yasuda: It's been a pleasure to work with MGI. As MGI can always provide swift service action whenever issue happens. Meanwhile, MGI service team has been providing follow-up action quickly, and can instruct customers to handle instrument troubles as first treatment via phone call as whenever needed. More importantly, we are very satisfied with DNBSEQ-G400RS's* data quality and MGISP-100RS's advantages for reducing labor cost and simple operation steps. So, no doubt, we will consider keeping partnership with MGI as long as the machine works.

About Cell Innovator

Established in October 2008 by a team of scientists from Kyushu University, Japan, Cell Innovator is dedicated to providing microarray analysis, gene expression analysis and other scientific services to universities, pharmaceutical companies and research institutes in Japan.  The Cell Innovator team is not interested in a for-profit business model to scale up services by capital raising, but strongly focused on providing consistent quality services for the scientific community, including conducting experiments, analyze data, producing reports such as heat maps, pathway analysis, and clustering, and providing sufficient support for every customer.