National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Work on defining a set of symbols to describe interactions and relationships of molecules was pioneered by Kurt Kohn at the National Cancer Institute with his Molecular Interaction Maps (MIM). The development of SBGN was initiated by Hiroaki Kitano, supported by a funding from the Japanese New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization. The meeting that initiated development of the Systems Biology Graphical Notation took place on February 11–12, 2006, at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), in Tokyo, Japan.