Next, it will use a database of genes maintained by Incyte Pharmaceuticals, in Palo Alto, Calif.
The next step in Zeneca's research called for another service conveniently available at Incyte.
Incyte also plans to tests its drug in treatment resistant forms of this disease.
The move prompted other drug companies to invest in similar gene databases at Incyte and elsewhere.
Incyte has yet to receive any drug royalties, and still it is profitable.
When automated gene sequencers began sifting through thousands of DNA units a day, Incyte switched its focus to genes in 1993.
In 1997 he helped set up Diadexus as a venture between SmithKline and Incyte (each still owns a 20% stake).
Incyte's 100 mammoth freezers store 15 million clones -- 4 million of them are Incyte's, the rest are public domain clones.
An HGS rival, Incyte, has shared genomics secrets with most major drug firms, but no resulting drugs have yet entered early trials.
"We believe Incyte has substantially lower sequencing capacity than Celera, " says Gibbons.
No surprise that Incyte employs only 125 biologists, but 175 programmers.
Here's how Zeneca, a London-based pharmaceuticals firm, went about using Incyte to help it discover a drug that would bust bacteria without hurting humans.
These programmers have put together the DNA library and have written software that makes the library more valuable for Incyte's customers in the drug industry.
Incyte chief executive Paul Friedman says the company hopes to get data from a final-stage myelofibrosis trial in December that could lead to approval next year.
Incyte's business is to make sense of the data -- to piece short stretches of DNA into longer ones and to find out what proteins they code for.
Incyte's database contains thousands of genes found in different tumors.
One stock that Gibbons is particularly bearish on is Incyte (nasdaq: INCY - news - people), the first gene database company and one of Celera's rivals.
When a company takes possession of an Incyte clone, it agrees to pay royalties between 1% and 9% on the sale of any drugs that may result from the research.
Its biologists called up two Incyte databases -- LifeSeq, with 3 million human gene fragments containing 850 million DNA xunits, and PathoSeq, with 30 bacterial genomes containing 75 million units.
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.
Researchers from MD Anderson Cancer Center and elsewhere are reporting today in the New England Journal of Medicine that the Incyte drug, called INC424, improved symptoms of about 75% of 153 patients with myelofibrosis.
Not all of these new drugs came from big pharma as biotech companies like Regeneron (Eylea for wet acute macular degeneration), Vertex (Kalydeco for cystic fibrosis) and Incyte (Jakafi for bone marrow disease) had major drugs approved.
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Among the largest underlying components of XBI, in trading today Pharmacyclics, Inc. ( NASD: PCYC) is up about 0.9%, Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ( NASD: ISIS) is up about 3.6%, and Incyte Corporation ( NASD: INCY) is up by about 0.3%.
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Among the largest underlying components of XBI, in trading today Dendreon Corp ( NASD: DNDN) is up about 3.5%, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ( NASD: REGN) is up about 0.5%, and Incyte Corporation ( NASD: INCY) is higher by about 0.9%.
Among the largest underlying components of XBI, in trading today Seattle Genetics Inc ( NASD: SGEN) is up about 0.4%, Incyte Corporation ( NASD: INCY) is up about 0.8%, and Pharmacyclics, Inc. ( NASD: PCYC) is up by about 1%.
Many genomics companies such as Celera (nyse: CRA - news - people), Incyte (nasdaq: INCY - news - people) and Affymetrix (nasdaq: AFFX - news - people) make their money by helping larger drugmakers identify genes involved in disease.
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