Rival descriptions of the human genome were published by Celera Genomics , a private company, and the Human Genome Project , an international government-backed consortium, in rival scientific publications.
What make better tests possible are gene databases, first developed in the early 1990s by Human Genome Sciences and Incyte Genomics, that categorize thousands of genes by the type of diseased tissue they inhabit.
In the five years since Lander and Broad had their first talk, companies that aimed to make money off the genome such as Human Genome Sciences and Celera Genomics have seen their stock prices plummet by more than 80%.
And the genome maps created by the government and Celera Genomics, the biotech Venter headed back in 2000, are averages of several individuals, so they miss the very genetic differences that would cause disease.
He hopes to jump-start the efforts of a coterie of tiny biotech firms developing high-speed gene-scanners, in the same way that his work at Celera Genomics forced the government's Genome Project to accelerate its efforts.
He hopes to stimulate the efforts of a group of tiny biotech companies that are developing high-speed gene-scanners in the same way that his work at Celera Genomics forced the government's Genome Project to accelerate its efforts.
Under the leadership of genomics pioneer William Haseltine , Human Genome Sciences (nasdaq: HGSI - news - people ) has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over about a decade to develop drugs.
Another company that has a deal with BP is Synthetic Genomics, which was founded by human genome pioneer J.
Celera genomics began life as the swashbuckling mapper of the human genome, but it never could find the profit treasure buried in that map.
The first drugs from the genomics research of 15 years ago, from Amgen, Human Genome Sciences, and GlaxoSmithKline, are just now inching toward the market.
Craig Venter, who led the privately financed version of the Human Genome Project, is trying it too, through his latest venture, Synthetic Genomics, in San Diego.
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But the Personal Genome Machine, if it can meet its non-stellar specs, could open up genomics to individual researchers who are locked out research right now.
In the five years since Lander and Broad had their first talk, companies that aimed to make money off the genome such as Human Genome Sciences (nasdaq: HGSI - news - people ) and Celera Genomics (nyse: CRA - news - people ) have seen their stock prices plummet by more than 80%.
This medicine is an impressive collection of firsts: not only is it the first drug approved to treat lupus, a potentially fatal disease in which the immune system attacks healthy tissues, it is also one of the first drugs to come out of genomics, the systematic evaluation of human genetics that was epitomized by the human genome project a decade ago.
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But the new trials by Millennium and Abbott stand as a valuable test of whether the money poured into genomics firms--not to mention the billions of dollars spent mapping the human genome--was really well spent.
Now, however, the company is positioning itself to become vitally important to the stampede of companies searching to make the jumble of genetic code listed by Celera Genomics cra (nyse: cra - news - people) and the Human Genome Project into drugs and, eventually, money.
Back then, Celera Genomics (nyse: CRA - news - people ) and the publicly funded Human Genome Project (HGP) had yet to show off their drafts of the human DNA sequence and Celera's market cap was nearly eight times what it is now.
Dr Venter was working out his frustrations after having been fired in 2002 from Celera Genomics, a company he helped set up in 1998 with the specific aim of sequencing the human genome faster and better than the public Human Genome Project was managing at the time.
Craig Venter, who mapped the genome back in 1995, talked about his latest project: ushering in the "Jurassic Park" era of combinatorial genomics, where scientists will create life by typing out DNA. He predicts his team will be able to produce a single-cell eurkaryote--and eventually gasoline--in the lab from cellular building blocks within ten years.
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