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Warum gehen heute so viele Biotex in den Keller?

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Hier ist der Grund: (Angeblich sollen nur Lügen hinter den Verdienstmöglichkeiten der Genetech-Unternehmen stecken)

Monday June 26, 8:34 am Eastern Time
New companies scramble to exploit human genome
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) - The human genome may be mapped, but the real work, and the real money to be made from the three billion letters of genetic code, still lie ahead.

The publicly funded, international Human Genome Project and Celera Genomics Inc. (NYSE:CRA - news), a Rockville, Maryland-based company, will announce on Monday that they have sequenced and assembled most of the human genome. British scientists announced Monday that 97 percent of the genome had been mapped.

Researchers have a few gaps to fill, but for the most part they will have put all the ``base pairs`` -- the nucleotide compounds that make up DNA -- into their right order.

Next they have to figure out how to read it.

``With the human genome nearly mapped, one of the next major genetic advances will be the discovery of how genetic variation affects health,`` James Watson, who helped discover the double-helix structure of DNA, said in a recent statement.

Drug companies already look for genes that affect disease, but having a full map of the genome will help scientists locate disease-linked genes they would never have found, will help identify who is at risk of certain diseases, and will aid in tailoring drugs, because genes can help determine how a person will respond to a drug.

Already, companies are sprouting up to take advantage of the new science of genomics.

Mountain View, California-based Curagen Corporation (NasdaqNM:CRGN - news) is working to identify the little changes that can make one person different from another. The most basic changes, called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, pronounced ``snips``), represent the swapping of a single basic component of DNA, meaning an ``A`` becomes a ``T`` or a ``G`` or a ``C``.

Curagen is also searching the genome for the protein products of genes that might be used to treat disease. This is already done -- insulin, for instance, is the product of a gene -- but companies such as Curagen and Rockville-based Human Genome Sciences Inc. (NasdaqNM:HGSI - news) think more useful proteins can be identified by searching the genome.

New Haven, Connecticut-based Genaissance Pharmaceuticals is taking the SNP search one step up, by looking for collections of differences in genes known as haplotypes.

Gualberto Ruano, CEO of Genaissance, says the body is chock-full of them. ``Per gene we find about 15 SNPs, and those SNPs are organising to about 18 haplotypes,`` he said in a telephone interview.

``By looking at a collection of related SNPs within a gene of pharmaceutical significance, rather than at each SNP independently, Genaissance is able to identify precise genetic `bar codes`, or haplotypes, that influence individual responses to drugs.``

Waltham, Massachusetts-based Genome Therapeutics Corp. (NasdaqNM:GENE - news) is looking for genes associated with disease and selling the information to major drug companies such as Schering-Plough and AstraZeneca.

All this is harder than it sounds. Looking at a string of nucleotides -- ATTGTTCAATTGCGGTCA and so on -- reveals little about where genes begin and end and even less about what they do. Each sequence of three letters codes for an amino acid, the basic building block of proteins, and the amino acids then group up to make a protein.

GeneFormatics, a privately held company based in San Diego, specialises in predicting what a protein will look like.

It makes approximate models of a protein`s three-dimensional structure, based on the sequence code.

Another company, Lexicon Genetics (NasdaqNM:LEXG - news), based in The Woodlands, Texas, figures out what genes do in two ways -- one by creating ``knockout`` mice that lack the particular gene, and by creating ``knockout`` versions of human cells.

``That is the only way to find which genes have real commercial value,`` Dr. Arthur Sands, chief executive officer of Lexicon, said in a telephone interview.

The other way to figure out what genes do is to use a computer, and IBM Corporation (NYSE:IBM - news) is building a supercomputer to do this. Known as Blue Gene, it will use its enormous resources to figure out how proteins ``fold``, which is key to how they act.

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Hier ein weiterer Artikel:


Biotechs lose momentum

By Stephanie O`Brien, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 12:11 PM ET Jun 26, 2000 NewsWatch
Latest headlines

NEW YORK (CBS.MW) -- Biotechnology stocks lost ground Monday afternoon, reversing earlier gains in advance of a landmark announcement from Celera Genomics and scientists from the government-funded Human Genome Project.

Celera said it`s completed the first assembly of the human genome, which has revealed a total of 3.12 billion base pairs. A genome is a complete set of genetic material contained in an organism`s chromosomes. Its size is generally given as its total number of base pairs.

The blueprint, which is the first assembly of the DNA sequence that makes up the code, will help shed light on how genes influence health and disease. See full story. Nonetheless, shares of many biotech stocks fell on Monday, following several weeks of gains preceding the human genome announcement.

Timothy Bepler, who manages the Orbitex Health and Biotechnology fund (ORHAX: news, msgs), said the sell-off in the shares was likely due to that run-up.

“Many investors had already bought in ahead of the story,” Bepler said. He said he’s been trimming his positions in genomics stocks, as their weightings became too large a percentage of the portfolio. Bepler said he’s pared holdings in names such as Celera, Maxygen and Affymetrix, even though he feels the long-term prospects are good.

Nobody woke up this morning and said “the world’s changed,” Bepler said. Some investors “have made a lot of money in these stocks,” he said.

Bepler said he believes other money managers have found themselves in similar straits, having to cut positions to maintain diversity in their portfolios even though the outlook is still promising.

“We’re still in there for the long-haul,” Bepler said.

The Nasdaq Biotech index ($IXBT: news, msgs) fell 0.1 percent in recent trading while the Amex Biotech Index ($BTK: news, msgs) fell 2.5 percent.

Celera fell 14, or about 11 percent to 113. Human Genome Sciences (HGSI: news, msgs) fell 13, or 9 percent, to 163. Affymetrix (AFFX: news, msgs) slipped 12 11/16 to 163.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health’s National Human Genome Research Institute, Dr. Ari Partrinos, associate director of Science for Biological and Environmental Research at the U.S. Department of Energy, and Dr. J. Craig Venter, President and Chief Scientific Officer of Celera Genomics (CRA: news, msgs) were scheduled to hold a news conference in Washington at midday.

The NIH, the DOE and their international partners will announce “working draft” of the human genome.