RE: LYNX (Lynx Therapeutics)
This is a brief description of LYNX that I've pilfered from a well respected poster on Yahoo.....for folks who are not familiar with this great co.
<< Although not as well known as CRA and AFFX, Lynx has the potential to become just as big. The reason? LYNX addresses a different but equally large
question/market as CRA and AFFX. Let's look at all three of these companies.
CRA will be finished sequencing the human genome soon and will use it's many thousands of patented sequences (if the patents hold up in court) as a mine for
potential drugs. To evaluate these sequences it has to determine the gene of interests protein product, its expression patterns, what role the protein plays, what
other proteins interact with that protein, what regulates the gene/protein upstream and what genes/proteins are regulated downstream. That's ALOT of work to do
for each of the 10,000 genes it plans to patent. Done the old fashioned way this would take decades. Don't get me wrong. CRA will find some great genes/drug
targets. They will make money from royalties and subscription to their database.
AFFX (and/or NGEN) likewise has a bright future. It's product will allow the quick analysis of expression patterns of genes. I forsee the biggest application of this
will be in hospitals where docs will order tests of patients expression patterns looking for cancer and other diseases. Much like blood work is ordered today. The
problem with gene chips is that the sequences must be known and laid down ahead of time (therefore you are only analysing a subset of expression patterns).
Moreover, gene chips have a hard time identifying low expression genes (which are sometimes the most important). Also, in the latest issue of Science there was
some discussion of gene chip performance variability (even turning on the AC can alter results). I think the gene chip companies will make alot of money in
diagnostics by sticking to the genomic equivilent of a chem7 test, but have problems outside of that.
And then comes LYNX. Unlike CRA and AFFX, LYNX is in a field by itself. It has no competition, and it's IP is on firm ground. What does LYNX do? Simply
put, it can detect difference in expression between two groups. It doesn't matter what those two groups are. Heart vs brain. Healthy liver vs diseased liver. Normal
population vs diseased population (pick a disease any disease). Young vs old. Smart vs dumb. (some ethical problems will crop up with this technology). It can
also find SNPs between populations of healthy people and diseased people (which will be very important after the Human Genome Project is finished). Add in to
this that LYNX technology is not limited to humans, but works equally well on any genome. Look at what LYNX did for Dupont's agritech effort: they identified
300,000+ cDNAs including 56,000 genes (many of them novel) in UNDER THREE WEEKS!!! Why is LYNX so efficient? LYNX's megasort and MPSS
technolgy examines all genes/cDNAs in parallel unlike CRA which must work sequentially (each experiment must be individually set up). This is similar to
computers, the advantages of parallel processing quickly outweigh sequential as input increases (which is why IBM is spending $100 million to build a computer
with a million processors). Their technology is at the same time simple, but difficult to grasp (I had to read their paper in PNAS twice, and I am a molecular
biologist).
In addition, LYNX just patented a proteomics technology which can only add to their value. Why hasn't LYNX taken off like CRA and AFFX? In large part I
think this is due to the difficulty in understanding their technology. What would I be doing with LYNX technology if I was them? Well I would running my machines
full time to unravel expression pattern differences between young and
old. Sure GERN has telomerase, but I suspect that will be small potatos in the long run.>> |
