Toray sets up new unit in Penang

Toray Malaysia Systems Solution Sdn Bhd managing director Peter Chan (second right) speaking at a press conference on Oct 17 after the official opening of Toray Malaysia Systems Solution Sdn Bhd at the Setia SPICE Convention Centre in Penang. Among those who were also present were Deputy Chief Minister II Dr P. Ramasamy (middle) and Toray IS Division, Japan general manager Akihiro Tada (first left)

 

Toray Malaysia Systems provides IT services

GEORGE TOWN: Toray Group (Malaysia), wholly-owned by Toray Industries Inc, Japan and one of the pioneers of Penang’s industrialisation programme, has expanded its business operations in Penang with the establishment of yet another company, namely Toray Malaysia Systems Solution Sdn Bhd (TMS).

TMS was established on May 2 with a RM5mil investment injected from Toray Japan.

It has offices at two locations in Penang, namely its head office at the Subterranean Penang International Convention and Exhibition Centre (Spice) and in Prai.

TMS managing director Peter Chan said the company, which is certified with MSC status by MDEC, provides global business services to its group of companies in Malaysia and abroad.

He said the company currently employs some 50 people and expects to increase the number to 100 within the next two to three years.

Chan said TMS provides full suite of information technology (IT) solutions and support for all aspects of business operations, ranging from planning and development to operation of information systems.

“These IT services include systems study, design, development, integration, deployment and maintenance, network infrastructure installation, IT helpdesk, systems administration support as well as IT consulting and IT research and development, according to customers’ stringent needs,” he added.

Chan said TMS is under the direct supervision of Toray Japan Information Systems Division.

“Backed by many years of information systems development experiences, technical know-how and skillful dedicated staff, TMS is set to contribute to Toray’s global business expansion as well as other related clients in Malaysia and the region.

“The head office at TMS Spice is equipped with the latest network infrastructure and IoT (Internet of Things) technology. It is designed to ensure that employees work in a conducive, healthy, happy, flexible working environment,” he said at TMS’ official opening at the Setia Spice Convention Centre recently.

Deputy Chief Minister II Dr P. Ramasamy, who was guest of honour at the event, said Penang recorded a total of RM5.3bil approved manufacturing investments from Japan from 2008 to 2016.

“I am also pleased to note that after the US and EU countries, Japanese investors make up the largest investments in Penang, making Japanese companies among the top FDI contributors to the Penang economy,” he added.

Source : The Star

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Malaysia Toray Science Foundation (MTSF) - Winning ways with Science creations

Correcting DNA mistakes

Using the knowledge of how the cell repair systems work will open the door to more effective cancer treatments



UNDERSTANDING how our cells repair damaged DNA, a breakthrough which earned the Nobel Chemistry Prize recently, could make cancer treatment more effective, experts say.

By revealing how our cells automatically fix DNA mutations which can lead to illness, the discovery opened the door to significantly improving chemotherapy’s effectiveness against cancer, which kills some eight million people worldwide each year.

“You can use this knowledge to destroy cancer,” said Nora Goosen, a DNA repair expert at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Chemotherapy attacks cancer cells by trying to scramble their genetic code and thus their ability to multiply, but cancer cells, just like healthy ones, do not give up without a fight.

he cell repair systems are going to try to undo the work of doctors by fixing the damage the doctors were trying to inflict,” said Terence Strick, a DNA repair researcher at the Jacques Monod Institute in Paris.

One solution would be to inhibit the ability of cancerous cells to self-mend.

“If you attack these repair mechanisms (in cancer cells) in combination with chemotherapy and other drugs ... it (treatment) can be more effective,” Goosen said.

Sweden’s Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich of the United States and Turkish-American Aziz Sancar were awarded the top chemistry award for unravelling the process by which our cells repair mutations caused to DNA by the Sun or carcinogenic substances found in alcohol and cigarettes, for example.

Mistakes in DNA, the chemical code for making and sustaining life, can cause cells to malfunction, age prematurely, and become cancerous.

The vast majority of changes to our DNA are immediately corrected, but some accumulate and lead to cancer. Some people are more susceptible to cancer because their DNA repair response is faulty.

Ironically, the same repair mechanism identified by the Nobel laureates can also cause cancerous cells to resist the effects of cancer treatment.

Alan Worsley, a spokesman for the charity Cancer Research UK, said new drugs are being developed to fight the disease.

He cited the treatment olaparib, which stops cancer cells from fixing DNA damage. It was approved by the European Commission in December 2014 for use in Europe.

Alain Sarasin of France’s CNRS research institute highlighted the risks of interfering with DNA repair systems.

“We don’t yet know how to target tumour cells specifically. If we gave a patient a molecule which inhibits the self-repair mechanism of cancer cells, it may also inhibit the repair systems of other cells like white blood cells,” he said.

“If, one day, we have a molecule which reinforces the DNA repair and can be targeted to blood cells, for example, followed by chemotherapy after, this would allow us to increase the chemotherapy dosage without unintentionally killing blood cells.

“For now, we don’t know how to do that.” – AFP

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Discovery of DNA Repair Methods Nails 2015 Chemistry Nobel Prize

Three scientists who found ways that cells fix damaged DNA—staving off cancer and other diseases—have won this year's prize

There are three reasons we are not constantly riddled with cancer, and today the scientists who discovered those reasons—three ways that cells repair damaged DNA that can ruin bodies--won the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

This morning The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the coveted prize is going to Tomas Lindahl from the Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory in Hertfordshire, England; Paul Modrich from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Duke University School of Medicine in North Carolina in the United States; and Aziz Sancar from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, also in the U.S. “I know, over the years, that I’d been mentioned for the prize,” Lindahl said in a telephone call to the academy. “But hundreds of people get considered every year so I feel very lucky.”

He and the other two researchers, working independently over the last 40 years, described three different mechanisms that create errors in DNA—the molecule that controls cell behavior—and the different ways that chemical and biological processes fix many of these problems.

“All forms of cancer start with DNA damage,” said biochemist Claes Gustafsson, one member of the Nobel chemistry committee. “If you do not have DNA repair, we would have a lot more cancer. That’s how important this is.” He added that the repair techniques let us understand how cigarette smoke, sunlight, and even mundane substances like water can damage DNA and point to ways that the damage can be rectified.

It is not just about cancer, Diane Grob Schmidt, president of the American Chemical Society, told Scientific American in an interview. “The understanding that we have of these mechanisms help us design drugs to repair all sorts of DNA errors,” she said. There are also several genetic diseases caused by the inability of cells to fix DNA properly, for instance, and work on the repair methods aids understanding of these ailments and how to treat them.

The discoveries illustrate the crucial and central role of chemistry, Schmidt added. “These mechanisms are fundamentally about the making and breaking of chemical bonds,” she said.

Scientists used to believe that DNA molecules were extremely stable. After all, they had to reliably transmit genetic information from generation down to generation. Then in the 1970s Lindahl demonstrated that the neat double helix and its components constantly decays. Every day, hundreds of those components, the DNA building block chemicals abbreviated as A, T, C, and G, get knocked out of their places. If the process continued unabated, the development of life on Earth would have been impossible. This insight led Lindahl to discover a series of enzymes and reactions, called base excision repair, which constantly works to fight this decay. The C building block, for instance, is repeatedly broken down into another molecule that should not be in DNA. The enzymes Lindahl found identify that broken molecule and rebuild it into a C.

Sancar found that cells use another technique to repair damage to DNA caused by ultraviolet light, the same thing that gives you a sunburn. This DNA fix is called nucleotide excision repair. People born with defects in this repair system will develop skin cancer if they are exposed to sunlight. Excision enzymes cut out the DNA lesions. The cell also uses this repair system to correct DNA damage people get after they are born, when they encounter mutagenic substances

Finally, Modrich found out how a cell corrects errors that occur during a vital biological process: Cell division, when DNA is replicated. This copying process is supposed to produce identical strands of DNA but often there are stretches of the new stand that do not match up. The set of cellular chemicals that Modrich found, a complex called mismatch repair, scans the strands and fixes them, reducing the error frequency during replication by about a thousand times during each replication cycle. (Modrich co-authored a Scientific American article on genetic engineering.)

“Without all of these repair mechanisms.” Lindahl said, “we would not be long-lived.” For finding them, he and the two other scientists will split $1 million dollars in three equal shares.
- By Josh Fischman | Scientific American







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Milestone for tech firm: Toray Group starts production of battery film at new division in Penang

Red letter day: (From left) Hagiwara, Lim and Toray Battery Separator Film Co Ltd president O. Inoue checking out Penfibre products used in electronic tools during the opening of the division.

Penfibre Sdn Bhd has launched its Battery Separator Film (BSF) division in Bayan Lepas, Penang. The company is a member of  Toray Group in Malaysia and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toray Industries, Inc

Penfibre Sdn Bhd managing director K. Kurokawa said the company obtained its International Procurement Centre licence last year to process and market BSF in Penang.

“Located at our sister company’s premises Penfabric in the Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone, the RM15mil BSF project was smoothly completed last year despite extensive renovation work.

“Commercial production started early this year,” he said in his speech during the opening of the BSF division at the Equatorial Hotel recently.

He added that the division was capable of producing a high value-added BSF trademark under the name of Setela for supply to regional buyers for use in lithium batteries.

Toray Industries Inc senior vice president S. Hagiwara said Toray was a leading global supplier of polyester film, commanding a combined global market share of about 20%.

Toray produces and sells many types of films under the trademark ‘Lumirror’. They are used in a wide range of applications.

“To date, we have established sound manufacturing and delivery systems at six major bases worldwide in Japan, the United States, France, Korea, China and Malaysia,” said Hagiwara.

Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng said Toray was now one of the single largest investors in Penang and Malaysia.

“Thank you to Toray for providing thousands of job opportunities for Malaysians over the last four decades,” he said.

He said Penang’s approved manufacturing investments increased to RM8.2bil last year, which is a 109% increase from RM3.9bil in 2013.

“This made Penang the state with the highest investment after Johor and Sarawak,” he said.

He added that total investments in Penang increased to RM48.2bil from 2008 to 2014.

Lim also commended Toray Group (Malaysia) for their contributions via several corporate social responsibility programmes.

These included providing the RM6mil electronic scoreboard at Batu Kawan Stadium in 1999 and setting up the Malaysia Toray Science Foundation in 1993 and the Toray USM Knowledge Transfer Centre with a donation of RM4mil.

Toray also contributed RM300,000 towards the Tech-Dome Penang project recently.- The Starmetro

THE OPENING OF PENFIBRE BATTERY SEPARATOR FILM (BSF) DIVISION

SPEECH BY YAB TUAN LIM GUAN ENG THE RIGHT HONORABLE CHIEF MINISTER OF PENANG AT THE LUNCHEON HELD IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE OPENING OF PENFIBRE BATTERY SEPARATOR FILM (BSF) DIVISION ON 23RD APRIL 2015 AT HOTEL EQUATORIAL, PENANG

Good afternoon.

It is indeed a great pleasure for me to attend this luncheon, held in conjunction with the official opening of the Battery Separator Film Division at Penfibre this morning.

On behalf of the government and people of Penang, I would like to extend our heartiest congratulations to Toray for another milestone in your business expansion, particularly in the State of Penang.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

From a humble beginning where Toray Industries Inc., Japan first invested in Penang in 1973, we are proud to see that TORAY Group (Malaysia) has grown and expanded tremendously over the last 40 over years. With approximately RM4.5 billion investment to date and annual sales revenue of over RM4.1 billion from Penfibre, Penfabric, Toray Plastics (Malaysia) and Toray BASF PBT Resin, Toray is now one of the single largest investors in Penang and Malaysia. Thank you to Toray for providing thousands of job opportunities to our Malaysians over the last 4 decades.

Penang’s approved manufacturing investments increased to RM 8.2 billion in year 2014 compared to RM 3.9 billion in year 2013, a significant 109% increased. This made Penang the top 3 State with the highest investment, after Johor and Sarawak. Total investments in Penang has increased 93.6% to RM48.2 billion for the seven years period of 2008 to 2014, compared to the previous seven years period of 2001 to 2007 which was only RM24.9 billion. The jobs created has also increased 20.1% to 109,592 compared to 91,252 for the same period.

Going forward, it is important for Penang to stress on establishing Penang as a centre of science and technology through the Tech-Dome Penang project. Supported by our strong commitment to the Penang Government’s CAT policy, which stresses on “Competency”, “Accountability” and “Transparency”, it is our fervent hope that the bond and cooperation between all stakeholders will bring about a better tomorrow for every one of us.

I am happy to note that TORAY Group (Malaysia) has never failed in coming forward to support our nation building, through the various community projects under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), namely:

• the RM2.5 Million Seberang Jaya Swimming Pool Complex in 1982,

• the RM6.0 Million Electronic Scoreboard at Batu Kawan Stadium in 1999,

• the establishment of the Malaysia Toray Science Foundation (MTSF) in 1993 to promote science and technology in Malaysia,

• the setting up of the “TORAY-USM KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER CENTRE” with a donation of RM4.0 Million to Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), and

• the recent cash contribution of RM300 thousand towards the Tech-Dome Penang project.

In conclusion, I would like to once again congratulate Toray for having successfully established this new BSF Division in Penang. I am confident that Toray Group will enjoy even greater success in your future endeavors.

Thank you.

Chief Minister of Penang - Kerajaan Negeri Pulau Pinang