About the Authors

Tomohiro Hamasaki

Contributed equally to this work with: Tomohiro Hamasaki, Hiroshi Suzuki, Hisao Shirohzu

Affiliation BONAC Corporation, BIO Factory 4F, Aikawa, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan

Hiroshi Suzuki

Contributed equally to this work with: Tomohiro Hamasaki, Hiroshi Suzuki, Hisao Shirohzu

Affiliation BONAC Corporation, BIO Factory 4F, Aikawa, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan

Hisao Shirohzu

Contributed equally to this work with: Tomohiro Hamasaki, Hiroshi Suzuki, Hisao Shirohzu

Affiliation BONAC Corporation, BIO Factory 4F, Aikawa, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan

Takahiro Matsumoto

Affiliations BONAC Corporation, BIO Factory 4F, Aikawa, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan, Department of Immunology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

Corina N. D'Alessandro-Gabazza

Affiliations Department of Immunology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan, Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

Paloma Gil-Bernabe

Affiliation Department of Immunology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

Daniel Boveda-Ruiz

Affiliation Department of Immunology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

Masahiro Naito

Affiliation Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

Tetsu Kobayashi

Affiliation Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

Masaaki Toda

Affiliation Department of Immunology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

Takayuki Mizutani

Affiliations BONAC Corporation, BIO Factory 4F, Aikawa, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan, Department of Molecular Pathology, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan

Osamu Taguchi

Affiliation Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

John Morser

Affiliation Division of Hematology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America

Yutaka Eguchi

Affiliation Laboratory of Molecular Genetics, Department of Medical Genetics, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka, Japan

Masahiko Kuroda

Affiliation Department of Molecular Pathology, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan

Takahiro Ochiya

Affiliation National Cancer Center Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan

Hirotake Hayashi

Affiliation BONAC Corporation, BIO Factory 4F, Aikawa, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan

Esteban C. Gabazza

gabazza@doc.medic.mie-u.ac.jp (ECG); ohgi@bonac.co.jp (T. Ohgi)

Affiliations BONAC Corporation, BIO Factory 4F, Aikawa, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan, Department of Immunology, Mie University Graduate School of Medicine, Mie, Japan

Tadaaki Ohgi

gabazza@doc.medic.mie-u.ac.jp (ECG); ohgi@bonac.co.jp (T. Ohgi)

Affiliation BONAC Corporation, BIO Factory 4F, Aikawa, Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan

Competing Interests

TH, H. Suzuki, H. Shirohzu, T. Matsumoto and T. Mizutani are employees of BONAC Corporation. ECG, HH and T. Ohgi are members of the Board of Directors of BONAC Corporation. YE, MK, T. Ochiya, and JM are members of the Advisory Board of BONAC Corportation. Recently, the patent on nkRNA (WPO Patent WO/2012/005368A1) and PnkRNA (WPO Patent WO/2012/017919A1) became public, and in these patents, the names of HH, H. Shirohzu, TH, H. Suzuki are included. ECG has a pending patent (Patent 2011-237166) on the human TGF-beta1 transgenic mouse. The other authors have no conflict of interest. The products described above have not been as yet marketed. 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, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: ECG HH T. Ohgi. Performed the experiments: TH PGB TK MT T. Matsumoto H. Shirohzu CNDG T. Mizutani MN DBR. Analyzed the data: ECG OT YE JM MK T. Ochiya T. Ohgi. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HH T. Ohgi TH H. Suzuki. Wrote the paper: ECG JM.