About the Authors

Kenna Shirasuna

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

kenna.shirasuna@astellas.com

Affiliation Drug Discovery Research, Astellas Pharma, Inc., Ibaraki, Japan

Masayuki Ito

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Drug Discovery Research, Astellas Pharma, Inc., Ibaraki, Japan

Takashi Matsuda

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Drug Discovery Research, Astellas Pharma, Inc., Ibaraki, Japan

Tsuyoshi Enomoto

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation

Affiliation Department of Gastrointestinal and Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, University of Tsukuba Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Ibaraki, Japan

Yusuke Ohara

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation

Affiliation Department of Gastrointestinal and Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, University of Tsukuba Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Ibaraki, Japan

Masayoshi Yamamoto

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Supervision

Affiliation Ibaraki Western Medical Center, Ibaraki, Japan

Satomi Nishijima

Roles Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Drug Discovery Research, Astellas Pharma, Inc., Ibaraki, Japan

Nobuhiro Ohkohchi

Roles Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision

Affiliation Department of Gastrointestinal and Hepato-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, University of Tsukuba Hospital, Faculty of Medicine, Ibaraki, Japan

Sadao Kuromitsu

Roles Conceptualization, Resources, Supervision, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Drug Discovery Research, Astellas Pharma, Inc., Ibaraki, Japan

Competing Interests

The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors (KS, MI, TM, SN and SK), but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. The authors declare no competing financial interests. This commercial affiliation does not alter our adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.