Ricoh acquired a 34.5% stake in Elixirgen, a Baltimore-based biotechnology company focused on stem cell related technology, as part of a strategic partnership to develop innovative biomedical products and services that support drug discovery based on cell differentiation technology. Financial terms were not disclosed. Nobuhiro Gemma, Fellow, General Manager of HealthCare Business Group, Ricoh Company, stated, “We are thrilled to partner with Elixirgen Scientific on this new biomedical development initiative. By combining the technologies from our two companies, it will be possible to produce disease-specific cell chips derived from multiple iPS cell lines, for example. These cell chips can evaluate the diversity of human responses of chemicals at one time in terms of efficacy and toxicity before moving to the clinical trial stage. In the process of drug discovery, this method using the cell chips will greatly improve the entire drug development process because human diversity is considered in the earliest stage.”