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Biotech / Medical : Incyte (INCY) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: chirodoc who wrote (859)	2/17/1999 8:54:00 PM
From: Cytokine1	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3202

cdoc--could exIncy be The Rman incognito? I've seen those Yahoo posts and that's what I have long suspected. Rocketman?

To: chirodoc who wrote (859)	2/18/1999 1:58:00 AM
From: Rocketman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3202

<<<<<The "race" for the human genome is one where finishing is important.>>>>> Why??? From a psychological viewpoint or from a commercial standpoint? What the hell is the "human genome" anyway??? My DNA is different from anyone elses, so what constitutes closure of the genome. While I think closure is a nice lofty goal, I don't think that it buys you much advantage over being 99% of the way there. No one company is going to own the patents on all genes. I think Celera will probably get full closure before INCY because Celera's method is set up to achieve that. I think INCY will make more money at it because they have one hell of a head start and because they focus on the stuff that has commercial value and not just basic research/academic value. Much of what Celera will mine will be the "junk DNA" which probably really isn't junk, but is DNA involved in developmental and control functions. However, I am not convinced that it will be easy to put this information to commercial use. Also, I do think that a lot of DNA is going to turn out to be junk with no use, which has been left over from our yeast ancestors, etc.... Genetic Engineer then goes on in the second paragraph to state that INCY will add the most value to the race to the genome. He has it right on there. And, keep in mind, INCY is not an organization formed to advance the knowledge of the human species, although that is a noble thought and turns out to be a by-product of what they do. INCY is a for-profit corporation whose whole intent in being is to create value for its shareholders (although at times I think they tend to ignore and take the shareholders for granted in the short term while they build value for the long term). As far as individual gene patents going down in value, I think that it really will come down to what the gene does that will determine the value. INCY will achieve great value from genes that result in products that pay royalties. The vast majority of genes sequenced will be of no commercial value in making products, but will help in overall understanding of the genome. Now, when there were a couple of genes patented, those genes were each pretty damn valuable, when there were a couple of hundred genes patented they each weren't worth quite as much, and as we see tens of thousands of genes patented each gene on average will be worth even less. First of all there is no way each one can be fully pursued to achieve commmercial value. Secondly, many of them won't be of value anyway if you did pursue them. Thirdly, it is just a numbers game of more to choose from ie.) competition, which tends to drive down costs. Does the overall value of what INCY have keep going up in value - damn straight it does. Keep in mind that even if the average gene is now worth less than it used to be (with no basis of judging its royalty value by the way), the average cost of finding that gene is also dropping, probably by a much higher degree than the value does. Rman