About the Authors

Ken Sasai

Affiliation KAN Research Institute, Inc., Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Etsuko Takao-Rikitsu

Affiliation KAN Research Institute, Inc., Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Taiko Sukezane

Affiliation KAN Research Institute, Inc., Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Emmy Yanagita

Affiliation Division of Diagnostic Pathology, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Harumi Nakagawa

Affiliation KAN Research Institute, Inc., Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Machiko Itoh-Yagi

Affiliation KAN Research Institute, Inc., Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Yukina Izumi

Affiliation KAN Research Institute, Inc., Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Tomoo Itoh

Affiliation Division of Diagnostic Pathology, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Tsuyoshi Akagi

t-akagi@kan.eisai.co.jp

Affiliation KAN Research Institute, Inc., Kobe, Hyogo, Japan

Competing Interests

All authors are or were employees of KAN Research Institute, Inc, with the following exceptions: Emmy Yanagida and Tomoo Itoh. KAN Research Institute is the subsidiary of Eisai Inc., which is the funder of this study. A part of this work has resulted in a patent application titled “Method for producing tumor cell” from Eisai R&D Management Co., Ltd. The patent number is WO2011152554. There are no further patents, products in development, or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: KS TA. Investigation: KS ETR TS EY HN MIY YI TI TA. Methodology: KS ETR HN TA. Project administration: KS TA. Supervision: KS TA. Visualization: KS ETR HN TA. Writing – original draft: KS TA. Writing – review & editing: KS TA.