Now Celera plans to win proteomics race
Sunday July 16, 3:19 pm Eastern Time
By Ben Hirschler
BIRMINGHAM, England, July 16 (Reuter) - Craig Venter, head of U.S. firm
Celera Genomics (NYSE:CRA - news) which last month finished the race to
map the human genome, said on Sunday his new goal was to map the
proteins which drive all chemical reactions in the body.
The president and chief scientific officer of the Maryland firm, attending a scientific conference
here, said Celera would spend heavily on a new class of mass spectrometry machines for its
drive into proteomics.
Proteomics involves indentifying the function and inter-relationship between proteins, and their role
in disease.
This new avenue could eventually see Celera move from the simple provision of information to
drug discovery.
``A big part of the business is the straightforward providing of information -- but I'm not complacent
just to do that,'' Venter told reporters.
Mapping of the ``book of life'', or genome, was only the start for Celera which now aimed to work
down the biochemical chain from gene to protein to help indentify diagnostic tests or treatments for
disease, he said.
``We will be moving towards therapeutics but whether we ever ever do a clinical trial ourselves or
not is another matter,'' he added.
Celera's near-term business plan is to make money by charging drug makers and researchers
subscriptions to giant databases detailing the genetic makeup of humans and other organisms.
Venter expects to finished sequencing the mouse genome by December.
So far his company has signed up six pharmaceutical companies plus research institutions around
the world and Venter said it had committed revenues of more than $200 million.
He declined to say when he expected Celera to make a profit.
The company had revenues of $12.4 million in the year to June 1999 but reported a loss of $43.5
million, reflecting its heavy expenditure on computers and analytical machines.
Celera's stock hit an all-time high of $252 a share on February 25 -- valuing it at some $14 billion --
but has retreated sharply since then amid some concerns about how fast its business model will
start delivering results. It closed on Friday at $92-5/16.
Most industry analysts do not see Celera turning a profit for around five years.
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