LIKE it or not, 1998 was the year in which the genome project turned into a
race. In May, veteran DNA sequencer Craig Venter helped to found Celera Genomics
of Rockville, Maryland, with a pledge to finish sequencing the human genome by
2001. And in August, Incyte Pharmaceuticals of Palo Alto, California, upped the
stakes when it promised to complete a first run through the genome鈥攁lbeit
a patchy one鈥攂y 2000.
The Human Genome Project (HGP), a loose international alliance of government
and charity-funded labs, countered by bringing its timetable forward by two
years. According to some insiders, this was largely at the instigation of
Britain鈥檚 Wellcome Trust, the world鈥檚 largest medical charity, which convinced
officials in the US that the project couldn鈥檛 simply be left to the private
sector. The HGP now aims to identify all 30 billion bases in the human genome by
2003.
But this race could be a rerun of Aesop鈥檚 fabled contest, since the
commercial hares are in danger of losing out to the steady progress of the
publicly funded tortoises. Both have strong motivations to get DNA sequences
first. The companies want to win patents, while the public sequencers say they
want to keep the data freely available for future research. The problem for
Incyte and Celera is that once a sequence is deposited in a public database, it
becomes very hard to patent. So who will finish up as winner?
Advertisement
鈥淚t鈥檚 really much too early for anyone to say,鈥� says Robert Cook-Deegan of
the National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC, who helped to create the Gene
Patents Database, which is run by the Foundation for Genetic Medicine in
Manassas, Virginia.
Among other wild cards, Celera鈥檚 efforts could be hampered by a dispute over
patents with the British firm Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, about rights to use
the dyes that allow sequencing machines to speed-read the genome.
To avoid being beaten by the HGP, Celera says it will concentrate on single
nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs. These are one-letter changes in the genetic
code sometimes found in association with genetic predispositions to certain
diseases. Jane Rogers, a molecular biologist at the Sanger Centre, the Wellcome
Trust鈥檚 genome campus in Cambridgeshire, agrees that identifying SNPs has not
been a major focus for the HGP鈥攚hich is instead drawing up a 鈥渃onsensus鈥�
sequence for a typical human. 鈥淭he public effort will probably not cost Celera
any patents,鈥� she says.
But Francis Collins, head of the National Center for Human Genome Research
near Washington DC, part of the US National Institutes of Health, isn鈥檛 so sure.
In October, the NIH divided $40 million among more than 20 labs across
the US to support SNP discovery, he says.
Celera has promised to make nearly all the sequences it produces public after
three months鈥� delay, to give it time to patent interesting genes. 鈥淚f there was
no public effort, I can鈥檛 imagine why they would make their sequences public,鈥�
observes Cook-Deegan.
Incyte, however, makes no bones about its plan to keep all its data to
itself. Nevertheless, the element of competition with the public sector is
played down by Incyte president Randy Scott. 鈥淏ecause of our focus on gene-rich
regions, we aren鈥檛 competing directly with the Human Genome Project,鈥� he
says.
Collins makes similar conciliatory noises: 鈥淚t鈥檚 been very good to have the
pot stirred by the private announcements. It keeps us from getting complacent.鈥�
However, Collins can鈥檛 hide his will to win the race. 鈥淭his trend to patent
research tools so far upstream is dangerous,鈥� he says. 鈥淗aving as much of it as
possible in the public domain is very important.鈥�
