About the Authors

Shigeru Sasaki

ssasaki@sapmed.ac.jp (SS); mtoyota@sapmed.ac.jp (MT)

Affiliation First Department of Internal Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan

Tadao Ishida

Affiliation First Department of Internal Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan

Minoru Toyota

ssasaki@sapmed.ac.jp (SS); mtoyota@sapmed.ac.jp (MT)

Affiliation Department of Molecular Biology, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan

Akinobu Ota

Affiliation Immuno-Biological Laboratories Co., Ltd., Fujioka, Japan

Hiromu Suzuki

Affiliations First Department of Internal Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan, Department of Molecular Biology, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan

Akinori Takaoka

Affiliation Division of Signaling in Cancer and Immunology, Institute for Genetic Medicine, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan

Hiroshi Yasui

Affiliations First Department of Internal Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan, Department of Molecular Biology, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan

Hiroyuki Yamamoto

Affiliation First Department of Internal Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan

Hideyasu Takagi

Affiliation First Department of Internal Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan

Masahiro Maeda

Affiliation Immuno-Biological Laboratories Co., Ltd., Fujioka, Japan

Tsutomu Seito

Affiliation Immuno-Biological Laboratories Co., Ltd., Fujioka, Japan

Masayuki Tsujisaki

Affiliation Department of Gastroenterology and Hematology, Tenshi Hospital, Sapporo, Japan

Yasuhisa Shinomura

Affiliation First Department of Internal Medicine, Sapporo Medical University, Sapporo, Japan

Kohzoh Imai

Affiliation Division of Novel Therapy for Cancer, The Advanced Clinical Research Center, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

Competing Interests

A. Ota, M. Maeda, T. Seito are employees of Immuno-Biological Laboratories Co., Ltd. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLoS ONE policies on sharing data and materials with other investigators.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SS TI KI M. Tsujisaki YS. Performed the experiments: SS TI AO AT HT HS . Analyzed the data: H. Yasui H. Yamamoto HT M. Toyota. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: TS YS AO MM . Wrote the paper: M. Toyota HS KI SS.