Celera mulling move into drug making
Reuters
F S b f BC-HEALTH-CELERA-URGENT DRU-US-DRU-US-HOT-HEA 07-20 0221 NEW YORK, July 20 (Reuters) - Celera Genomics (NYSE: CRA),which last month announced sequencing the human geneticblueprint, is interested in possibly developing antibody-baseddrugs to fight cancer and other diseases, Cellera head CraigVenter said on Thursday. "We are thinking about developing cancer vaccines down theroad. We haven't decided whether to do our own clinicaltrials," Venter said, referring to so-called therapeuticvaccines that coax the immune system to step up its attack ontumors. Celera currently is only in the information business,selling genetic information to drug companies and universities,including databases with information about humans as well asresearch organisms, such as the fruit fly and mouse. Although Celera has not yet decided to widen its businessmodel to developing drugs, Venter told Reuters at a meeting inNew York he has a personal interest in doing so because hisefforts could theoretically speed development of therapies. Venter said Celera's decision whether to develop medicineswill hinge on what discoveries the company makes in the next 24months as it uses its own sophisticated machines to study thestructure, function and interrelationships between proteins --a field known as proteomics. ((--Ransdell Pierson, Healthdesk, (212) 859-1736))
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