FOOLs interview with CRA ceo...the ceo was a major scientist in government,,,a real maverick,,,,
Fool Interview With a Biotech Bigwig
Part 1
December 8, 1999
David and Tom Gardner had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Craig Venter, chief scientist and
president of biotechnology firm Celera (NYSE: CRA), on a recent Motley Fool Radio Show. In
this interview, Dr. Venter discusses the biotechnology industry, mapping genetic code, and his
thoughts on male-pattern baldness.
David: Dr. Venter, it's a pleasure to have you on this show. Tom, why don't you just fire away with
the cocktail party question?
Tom: Craig, actually I was thinking about this interview in terms of what my mother knows about
the world of biotechnology, which is very little, and I was imagining a scenario where we were all at
a cocktail party and my mom asked you what you do for a living. How would you explain the
industry and your work inside of that industry?
Venter: Actually that's a tough question, but it's a good one in terms of people do want to
understand this fundamental information. We're decoding every letter of the human genetic code.
The chromosomes that each person gets from their mother and their father comprise about 3 billion
unique letters of genetic code that are the fundamental basis of everything that we are as a species
physically, emotionally, mentally, and we're trying to decode that massive amount of secret
information about life to be able to see if we can understand who we are and where we came from.
David: You say it's a massive amount of information. Can you quantify that?
Venter: Well, if you could read one letter of genetic code per second, it would take each person
100 years just to read the genetic information inside their own cells.
David: OK. Which means, Tom, that it would take you 200 years.
Tom: Now, Craig, I'm wondering when we think about this information, and we think about the
ability to view our species to understand who we are and what we're made up of and what the
environment around us is made up of, how is this information going to impact our lives -- just the
average Joe out there -- 10, 15 years from now, what will it mean to us?
Venter: I think the big difference in medicine as we go forward is going to be personalization of
medicine.... We'll be able to have preventative medicine by understanding the basis of our own
individual beings. We'll understand our individual propensity for disease, the likelihood that we'll get
one disease or another or not get the disease, and we'll have drugs that target each person's
individual differences. The best drugs only work on about 60% of the population. It's not unusual for
a drug to only work on one out of three people effectively. Those differences are due to the minor
differences in the spelling of the different genes leading to different structural changes. So
understanding the genetic code means in the time course you were talking about, in the next 5 to 15
years, people will start to get the drugs that they know will work on their system, not be toxic or
lethal to them, and actually treat their diseases.
David: And that is truly amazing.
Tom: Now, Dr. Venter, I was reading in the New York Times two weeks ago now that
non-accident deaths... can be viewed as a series of preventable illnesses. Is that an
overstatement?... Please tell me it's an overstatement. How far can biotechnology reach in the lives
of the human species?
Venter: I think depending on the time frame you're talking about, it's going to take the next 100
years to truly understand the information we're generating here at Celera over the next six months.
So all of this talk of cloning and dramatically changing the human race is not going to happen. I think
each disease is going to be a battle that we have to fight with having this new information. But what's
going to change very quickly -- having the complete sequence of the human chromosomes and other
species -- is we will have all of the information for the first time to try and understand how cells
work, how cancer really happens, and it's only from that understanding will we ever begin to tackle
human disease in a comprehensive way.
But I think the danger is overpromising in terms of people should not expect miracles in the next 24
months because we've got this information. But it will catalytically change research around the world
overnight, and the hope is changing the basic research paradigm, having all of the human genes for
the first time in history we'll be able to truly... do something about diseases like cancer.
David: OK. Duly noted. Dr. Venter, your company is using computing power to gain a leg up
relative to the efforts of others, including the government, to do the same thing, which is to map the
human genome. Are you surrounded by a bunch of big computers cranking away right behind
you?... What's it like at your company headquarters, and talk about computing?
Venter: This facility operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, but it's largely automated due in fact
to the tremendous technology advances made by the other part of the corporation, PE Biosystems,
which has a separate tracking stock from Celera. They've come up with the new machines that help
us decode the genetic orders at a magnitude more faster and more accurately than we could before,
but that's just the beginning.
In terms of interpreting all of this information, we've had to team up with Compaq (NYSE: CPQ)
with their acquisition of Digital using the new Alpha Chip technology to build the world's second
largest supercomputer to begin to understand and interpret the human genome. So we have massive
computers around us here, large numbers of robots, large numbers of sequencing machines working
around the clock trying to make advances in medicine.
David: It sounds pretty cool. Are there laser shots going on all around this facility?
Venter: Each one of the 300 sequencing machine has a laser incorporated into it that's key to its
operation. If they were bouncing all around the facility, something dreadful would be wrong.
Tom: Dr.Venter, when I now think about what you're engaged in, and I approach it myself as an
investor, I see an incredible research venture that could have staggering implications over the next
hundred years. What is the economic model of Celera? How is the company going to benefit from
doing this research, and how are public shareholders going to benefit from it?
Venter: It's going to happen in several ways, and it's already starting to happen in terms of the
leading pharmaceutical companies in the world know that to develop new therapeutics they have to
have the ability to use and comprehend this massive amount of new information. And so a key part
of what we're doing is dotcom-to-dotcom Internet business where we're providing this information,
the understanding, the interpretation of it to help the leading pharmaceutical companies develop new
drugs. One of those is one you were talking about earlier, Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN). They've used
more successfully than anyone else in history human genes to develop new key therapeutics that
save and change people's lives. Understanding the genetic code is key to moving this forward. The
pharmaceutical industry is going to be a key part of building the early part of Celera's success.
Academic research institutions will also be subscribing to our online database.
But the ultimate long-term success is going out to physicians and to individuals to help people and
empower people to understand their own genetic codes and what it means for helping them predict
their medical futures, what they might do to change their lives. Things like colon cancer, with the
genes that we and others have found, is somewhat predictable. Nothing is absolute in genetics as
some people like to believe, but if you know that you have the spelling changes in the DNA
paradigms associated and linked to colon cancer, you don't wait until age 50 to go and get a
colonoscopy. Colon cancer is highly treatable if it's found early. By empowering people to know
whether they have an increased likelihood, they can have much more control over their own lives
and can be checked early and more frequently. That means they have a chance of catching cancer
early if it appears, and having it be an inconvenience instead of a lethal event.
David: And that's just one example, colon cancer, among many.
Venter: Out of probably 50,000 different examples.
David: If I'm an average person -- as I am -- and I'm new to this field and I'm learning about it,
what is the one thing that you'd suggest I keep an eye on?...
Venter: I think the single most important event on our minds is genetic privacy. Our plan is to
provide this information to individuals to empower their lives and let them be the controllers of it.
We don't want to create a database of individual's genetic profiles. And I think we all need to have
our genetic privacy be protected so it doesn't get used inadvertently against anybody.
David: Let me jump in and ask a question. Am I right that Iceland as a country has required that all
of its citizens provide their genome?
Venter: I don't think they've required all of the citizens to. I think they had a referendum where they
started a genetic screening company using the highly inbred populations in Iceland to help major
pharmaceutical and a local biotech company find the causes of disease, and I think all of the people
there are doing it voluntarily, but it is unusual in that it's being done at a national level.
David: So protecting the privacy of our own genetic information is something that I should be
particularly focused on?
Venter: That's right. And there are lots of laws pending in congress. It relates to national healthcare.
It relates to however this information gets used, how drugs get approved, so it all links back to each
of our fundamental genetic information.
David: OK. Good. Now, Tom Gardner, the closing payoff question for Dr. Venter.
Tom: This is the payoff question, Dr. Venter. I've been waiting throughout this entire interview and
all week for this interview to ask this question. I mean, I'm interested as an investor about what's
happening in society, but I'm looking at your photograph on the Celera.com website and I'm
noticing a single trait that we both share -- that's a very dramatic trait, particularly for men. That is
you're a bald guy and I'm a bald guy, and I'm wondering in biotechnological terms what do we have
to look forward to?
Venter: Well, that's an excellent question. That's where society norms sort of outweigh biology.
Male-pattern baldness is far too prevalent in the population to be a negative trait. In fact there are
several theories that it's extremely positive in natural selection in terms of sex appeal. And so some
of the fashion magazines definitely have it wrong, and I think people are going to be looking in the
future to see how they can lose their hair faster to be like you and me.
Tom: Oh. That was the intent of my question. How could others try and be like us? So we have to
invert the fashion magazines to really understand what fashion is. Dr. Venter, thank you very much
for sharing some time this weekend and shedding some light on the world of biotechnology and how
Celera is participating. Thanks for joining us.
David: And we wish you good luck.
Venter: Thank you. |
