Our brands
Our product offerings fall under three major brands. Each brand originated from a separate company with its own history and areas of expertise, and has since been incorporated under the umbrella of the Takara Bio Group, creating new synergies. Each brand represents our tireless commitment to providing exceptional products and services that advance scientific progress and improve the human condition through biotechnology.
Our Takara brand represents nearly 60 years of experience providing a diverse array of biotechnology products and services, including enzymes and reagents, contracted research and production capabilities, nutraceuticals, and gene-based therapies currently under clinical development. The brand originates from Takara Bio Inc., which was established as an offshoot of the Takara Shuzo beverage company in 1967.
For much of its history and up to the present day, the Takara brand has been associated with industry-leading restriction enzymes and PCR polymerases, including current offerings such as Takara Ex Taq, Takara LA Taq, and PrimeSTAR GXL. The variety of available Takara-brand enzymes provides researchers with tremendous flexibility in selecting the best one for a given application, including applications that involve the analysis of technically challenging samples. Takara Bio is also widely recognized for its RetroNectin transduction reagent, which has been used in countless clinical trials and is a worldwide standard for gene therapy protocols. Included among Takara-brand nutraceutical products are plant-derived dietary supplements, and several value-added mushroom cultivars.
In addition to products, a variety of services are offered under the Takara brand, including genome sequencing, expression profiling, data mining, technical support for immunotherapy research, and the production of custom reagents for gene therapy. Takara Bio Inc. is currently conducting clinical trials aimed at developing gene-based therapies for diseases such as cancer and AIDS, and the recent construction of a GMP-compliant production facility in Kusatsu City, Japan, has enabled the further expansion of the Takara brand to include clinical-grade products and services.
While the Takara brand encapsulates a wide assortment of product offerings, each is consistent with the mission of its parent company to improve the human condition through biotechnology, and this will remain a core principle as the brand continues to grow and evolve.
Our Clontech brand represents over 30 years of service to the life sciences research community through the development, commercialization, and support of kits and reagents for diverse experimental applications, with emphases in cell and molecular biology. The brand originates from technologies and products developed by Clontech Laboratories, Inc. (now Takara Bio USA, Inc.), and continues to evolve in response to the needs of our customers.
Noteworthy product offerings in the history of the Clontech brand include reagents and expression systems for analyses of gene function and protein-protein interactions, kits for cDNA synthesis and library construction, cDNA arrays for differential gene expression analysis, and a diverse assortment of widely used fluorescent protein vectors for studies of gene expression and protein localization. More recently, the Clontech brand has been associated with exceptional tools for next-generation sequencing (SMART and SMARTer kits) and PCR (Titanium Taq and Advantage 2 polymerases), as well as innovative solutions for cloning and mutagenesis (In-Fusion cloning systems), protein purification (Capturem technology), and genome editing (Guide-It kits).
Based on acquisitions which closed in 2017, the Clontech brand also includes automation technologies and DNA-seq chemistries which complement our established expertise and offerings in cDNA synthesis and low-input and single cell RNA-seq (based on our proprietary SMART technology) as well as in PCR and qPCR-based gene expression analysis. Specifically, these acquisitions include the ICELL8 platform for single-cell NGS analysis, the Apollo Library Prep System, and the SmartChip Real-Time PCR System for gene expression and genotyping analysis (based on acquisition of WaferGen Bio-systems, Inc.), and ThruPLEX and PicoPLEX gold standard DNA-seq chemistries (based on acquisition of Rubicon Genomics, Inc.). The combined acquisitions of WaferGen and Rubicon Genomics are synergistic and will allow the Takara Bio Group to provide the exciting benefits of the combined portfolios to the life science community.
Going forward, the Clontech brand will continue to embody our commitment to providing high-quality products and services that empower our customers to overcome technical hurdles and focus their efforts on the advancement of scientific knowledge.
Our Cellartis brand encompasses over 20 years of experience providing products and services for research applications involving stem cells. The brand originates from a company of the same name (now Takara Bio Europe AB), which was formed by researchers from the University of Gothenburg in 2001.
Historically, a primary focus of the Cellartis brand involved developing and distributing stem cell lines—including both human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs)—for general or custom applications. More recently, the scope of the brand has expanded to also include products such as culture systems, media, and reagents, which make our expertise and innovative technologies more readily accessible to life sciences researchers. An important milestone for the brand involved the development and commercialization of the Cellartis DEF-CS Culture System, a revolutionary approach to culturing stem cells that offers significant advantages relative to other methods.
For the future, a point of emphasis for the Cellartis brand will be the development of products and services targeted at specific research applications involving hiPSCs. One recent example of this is the Cellartis iPS Cell to Hepatocyte Differentiation System, which enables researchers to easily generate hepatocytes from iPSCs on demand, for applications such as drug development.
Takara Bio USA, Inc.
United States/Canada: +1.800.662.2566 • Asia Pacific: +1.650.919.7300 • Europe: +33.(0)1.3904.6880 • Japan: +81.(0)77.565.6999
FOR RESEARCH USE ONLY. NOT FOR USE IN DIAGNOSTIC PROCEDURES. © 2025 Takara Bio Inc. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks are the property of Takara Bio Inc. or its affiliate(s) in the U.S. and/or other countries or their respective owners. Certain trademarks may not be registered in all jurisdictions. Additional product, intellectual property, and restricted use information is available at takarabio.com.
