|
|
 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
| |
JANUARY 21, 2004
The Healthy Promise of Biochips [Page 2 of 2] "TRYING TO CATCH UP." NimbleGen, which has yet to turn a profit, will introduce several new niche services in 2004. It'll build so-called promoter chips, which will track the interaction of proteins with genes. And it'll create chips to help in the study of genetic variations between microbes -- knowledge that could come in handy for finding new antibiotics. Other players are trying to make a name for themselves as the limits to how much can be put on a single chip keep expanding. Illumina's six-genome chip, announced in mid-January and scheduled to be available at midyear, will let customers run six of the same experiments on a single chip, saving time and money, says Jay Flatley, Illumina's president and CEO. He hopes that this product will take some market share from Affymetrix. "We'd be naïve to think we can unseat Affymetrix, but we're trying to catch up," he says. Of course, Affymetrix, which last fall was the first large player to put the entire human genome on a single chip, has plans to avoid being outdone. And it continues to add to its large library of chips containing whole genomes of heavily researched organisms. "GREAT DIAGNOSTIC." Trevor Nicholls, chief commercial officer of global operations at Affymetrix, says researchers are increasingly finding its mix of products to be the right one. He doesn't see customization becoming a big part of Affymetrix' overall business, because "we can put so many whole genomes on a chip, there is less need for custom chips." He says its latest chips and chip-reading hardware allow for increasingly automated and more sensitive testing. Affymetrix is also ahead in exploring the next frontier: developing real-world uses for chips. In 2003, Swiss drugmaker Roche said it would use Affymetrix biochips to develop diagnostic tests. One of the first that's likely to emerge from the Roche partnership will detect variations in a gene called p450, which is known to affect the body's ability to process about 25% of drugs on the market. Knowing more about a patient's p450 gene should make it easier to prescribe the right medicine for that person. "It will be a really great diagnostic," says Robert Baird analyst Geist. In February, moreover, Affymetrix and French partner Biomerieux will introduce a chip that can test food DNA. Such information could be of interest to farmers who want to make sure that they're using untainted animal feed. NO MORE GUESSWORK? Other players, such as Amersham, see the emerging field of proteomics -- the study of the structure and function of proteins -- as a differentiating strength of their biochips. Trevor Hawkins, senior vice-president for development at Amersham's discovery-systems division, says it has been actively working out how to put a large number of proteins on chips, at the request of customers. "[Protein chips] are one of the next major growth areas," says Hawkins, who adds that Amersham hopes to be selling such products a year from now. Perhaps the ultimate achievement would be to use biochips to provide "personalized" medicine, a goal that scientists are gradually closing in on. In late 2002, researchers in the Netherlands used Agilent chips to read the gene expression pattern of women with breast cancer and determine what treatments would work best for their particular tumors. Many drug companies are already using these chips to learn more about the genetic makeup of the recruits in their clinical trials. This information should help make clearer which patients will and won't benefit from the drugs being tested. True, efforts to understand the links between genes and disease are still in their early stages. Much more work will have to be done before custom treatments are the norm. But they're almost certain to become that at some point, as innovative companies come closer to unleashing the potential of biochips.
 By Amy Tsao in New York
BW MALL
SPONSORED LINKS
Buy a link now!Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
 Copyright 2004, Bloomberg L.P.Terms of Use | Privacy Notice |
Printer-Friendly Version