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[maywillow] 04/9/2005 16:58

Reading the chimp book of life
By Helen Briggs
BBC News science reporter



Scientists have deciphered another book in the library of life - the genetic recipe of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee.

It is arguably the most valuable genetic blueprint for determining what makes us human.

Researchers have already begun to analyse the parts of the life code that are unique to each species.

Buried within the 3 billion DNA "letters" are the changes that put our ancestors on the pathway to humanity.

Wealth of new evidence

It is more than a century since Charles Darwin recognised that humans and chimps are related. A wealth of evidence has emerged since then, including the discovery of the first known chimpanzee fossil revealed this week.

Researchers hope the comparison of the chimp and human genomes will shed light on the past six million years or so of evolution, since the two species diverged from an apelike common ancestor.

In this brief eye blink of evolutionary time, the features that make us human emerged; among them our large brain, complex speech and the ability to walk upright. At the same time, we lost many of the features we associate with our ape cousins such as their dense body hair.

How are alike are we?
The number of genetic differences between a mouse and a rat is about 10 times more than between a person and a chimp
The number of genetic differences between a person and a chimp is about 10 times more than between two humans
The number of genetic differences between a human and a chimp is about 60 times less than between a human and a mouse
Alterations in the sequences of the chemical "letters" (base pairs) along our DNA should account for the differences.

It turns out that we are both more and less like apes than previously thought. This apparent paradox is a hallmark of the complexity of the mammalian genome.

If you take the most meaningful parts of the genome - the genes that code the proteins that build and maintain our bodies - the genetic sequences of man and ape differ by a mere 1% in terms of single letter changes to the genetic code.

But in more poorly-understood parts of the genome - regions of DNA that regulate our genes, for instance, or so-called junk DNA with as yet unknown functions - we are somewhat more divergent than we once thought.

Duplications and shuffling of stretches of DNA add a further difference of about 3% so, when you compare the two genomes as a whole, we share about 96% of DNA.

Disease defences

Many of the 35 million single letter (nucleotide) differences that set us apart from chimps lie in the genes that make proteins involved in our immune response. This is no great surprise, since chimps and humans would have encountered different diseases during evolution.




Scientists decode Clint the chimp's genetic sequence
Intriguingly, changes to parts of the human genome may have made us prone to certain diseases. A gene that seems to protect other animals against Alzheimer's appears not to function in our genome. Duplication of others stretches of DNA in humans are implicated in the development disorders spinal muscular atrophy and Prader-Willi syndrome.

In terms of what makes us human, the most promising areas for exploration are six regions that show very little variation among humans but more variation in chimps suggesting they were important in the human line of evolution. One of these regions contains a gene called FOXP2 that seems to be important in speech.

But as yet there is no smoking gun - a protein involved in regulating brain function, say - that may have caused our ape-like ancestors to branch off from chimps.

With the genomes of other primates, such as the orangutan, nearing completion, there will soon be other members of the family available for comparison.

The researchers who decoded the chimp genome hope that elaborating how few differences separate the species will broaden recognition of our duty to protect apes in the wild.

Only a day after their study was published in the journal Nature, the UN's environment and biodiversity agencies warned that some of the great apes - chimps, gorillas, and orangutans - could be extinct in the wild within a human generation.

[grupo guitarlumber] 02/8/2005 09:36

Gene device slashes the cost of decoding
By Nicholas Wade The New York Times
TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2005


A new kind of machine for decoding DNA may help bring costs so low that it would be feasible to decode an individual's DNA for medical reasons.

The machine, developed by a U.S.-based company, 454 Life Sciences, was used to resequence the genome of a small bacterium in four hours, its scientists report in an article published online on Monday by the journal Nature.

In 1995, when the same bacterium was first sequenced, by Claire Fraser, it required 24,000 separate operations spread over four to six months, she said in an e-mail message.

The machine uses the chemistry of fireflies to generate a flash of light each time a unit of DNA is correctly analyzed. The flashes from more than a million DNA-containing wells, arrayed on a plate the size of a credit card, are monitored by a light-detecting chip, the kind used in telescopes to detect the faintest light from distant stars. Then they are sent to a computer that reconstructs the sequence of the genome.

The decoding or sequencing of genomes has long depended on a chemical process invented by Frederick Sanger in 1977. But genome centers based on this technology are expensive to equip and operate.

For several years, biologists have been searching for a method that could be miniaturized and made cheap enough to stimulate a range of new applications.

Among several promising approaches, one called pyrosequencing has been developed by Pal Nyren and Mostafa Ronaghi at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

The technique depends on separating the double helix of DNA into single strands and building up new strands to complement the old ones. As each new DNA base is added to a growing strand, a chemical component known as pyrophosphate is discarded.

Nyren's team developed the chemistry to convert the discarded pyrophosphate into a trigger for luciferase, the enzyme that fireflies use to generate their light.

Because the chemists knew in each cycle which of the four DNA bases they had added, a flash of light indicated the sequence at that point.

Ronaghi, who is now at Stanford University, said that he and Nyren had developed the chemistry and showed it could be miniaturized and that 454 Life Sciences, having licensed their patents, had made the system practical.

"What they have done here is very significant," Ronaghi said, noting that the company had already sequenced 50 microbial genomes. "This is the first step toward $1,000 human genome sequencing."

The Joint Genome Institute, a federal genome sequencing center in California, has ordered one of the company's $500,000 sequencing machines but has not yet installed it.

The machine's limitation is that at present it can only read DNA fragments 100 units or so in length, compared with the 800-unit reading length now attained by the Sanger-based machines. That shorter span makes it harder to reassemble all the fragments into a complete genome, said Paul Richardson of the Joint Genome Institute, so that although microbial genomes can be assembled, mammalian genomes may be beyond its reach at present.

Jonathan Rothberg, chairman of 454 Life Sciences, said the company was already able to decode DNA 400 units at a time in test machines. It is working toward sequencing a human genome for $100,000, he said, adding that if costs could be further reduced to $20,000, the sequencing of individual genomes would be medically worthwhile.

There would be little advantage at present in sequencing a patient's entire genome, but in the medicine of the future, complete documentation about an individual's genetic makeup could well provide a prognosis or indicate a preferred treatment.

The new technology avoids a pitfall of the Sanger method, which is that the fragments of DNA to be analyzed are first amplified by being cloned in bacteria. But the bacteria cannot handle certain fragments, leaving gaps in the genome sequence. In the new technique, each fragment of DNA is captured in an individual drop of liquid and amplified to 10 million copies with a well-established chemical method known as the polymerase chain reaction.

The 10 million copies from each droplet are then attached to an ultra-small bead, and the beads are dropped into a credit-card-size grid of 1.6 million wells, where the pyrosequencing takes place. Each time the correct base is added to the fragments of DNA on a specific bead, a flash of 10,000 photons is picked up through the bottom of the wells by the light-detecting chip that sits under the small grid of wells.

A computer can reconstruct the sequence of bases composing the fragments and from the overlaps between fragments it can reassemble the entire genome from which they were derived.

[grupo guitarlumber] 31/7/2005 06:22

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Crucial Genetics collars police deal




By Julia Fields



DNA testing for police investigations is to be carried out for the first time by an accredited private company in Scotland.
Crucial Genetics, a spinout private firm from the University of Glasgow, will be officially accredited to undertake the tests by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS).

Based at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, the company expects to carry out forensic work for police forces and the military that would normally be outsourced to laboratories in England.

Scientists at Crucial have already been employed by contractors known as Ã'incident response consultantsÃ" to identify victims caught up in the Iraq insurgency.

Adam Middleton, business managerÊatÊCrucial,Êsaid: Ã'We've been working hard on getting this accreditation since April 2004, and it has been a long,ÊcomplicatedÊprocess. AchievingÊtheÊstandard required for UKAS accreditation is a real feather in our cap and opens up a whole new side of the business for us.

Ã'We can now service police and military forensic requirements, which no other private firm in Scotland can do. In the past, if the police wanted to outsource tests to identify a murderÊvictim,ÊforÊexample, the work would generally have had to go to England, but we're now in the position where we can provide that service from Glasgow.Ã"

AccordingÊtoÊMiddleton, only two other companies Ð LGC and Cellmark Ð have the same certification in the UK.

Crucial Genetics was formed from a DNA profiling laboratory run by Dr John Gow for the University of Glasgow in March 2004 to reap the rewards of the technology's increasing use in areas including solving crimes and analysing animal bloodlines.ÊTheÊcompany,Êwhich stillÊbenefitsÊfromÊresearch advancements at the university, is led by chief executive Gary Hamilton and owned by the Jersey-based investment vehicle Fifty-Six Ltd. The university owns a significant share ofÊtheÊcompanyÊandÊGow remains as technical director.

The company is on course to earn £200,000 in revenues by the end of 2005 from 48-hour paternity testing and tracing of family bloodlines.

Middleton said: Ã'We hope that forensic analysis will significantly add to our revenues. DNA is a massive part of criminal investigation now Ð if DNA material is picked up from the scene of a crime there's a 45% chance they will be able to pick up a matching suspect from the national DNA database.Ã"

CrucialÊisÊalso expanding into DNA profiling for breeding of pedigree dogs and horses. The service tests for genetic pre-disposition in the animals to produce offspring that might, for instance, have hip displasia, which leads to pain and debilitation. Ã'This has been going on in the US for a while. There are quite a lot of breeders in the UK and Ireland that might benefit from it,Ã" said Middleton.

31 July 2005

[ariane] 06/7/2005 19:17

Roche Builds Factories

Roche to invest $766 million in new manufacturing plants to keep up with demand for Genentech cancer drugs.
July 6, 2005

Roche announced this week that it is investing $766.3 million in new manufacturing facilities to produce the Genentech cancer drugs Herceptin and Avastin, and the hormone EPO.



The Basel, Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company owns a 58 percent share of the world's largest biotech company, Genentech.



Genentech has been struggling to match demand for its Herceptin and Avastin products, following new findings that demonstrated the drugs work in diseases other than those for which they were originally approved.



A new Roche factory in Penzberg, Germany, will make the breast cancer drug Herceptin and cost 400 million Swiss francs ($306.4 million). Another factory, also located in Penzberg, will manufacture the anemia treatment EPO with an investment of 200 million Swiss francs ($153.3 million).



Meanwhile, work is beginning on a facility in Basel, Switzerland, to make the active ingredient in Avastin, bevacizumab. This factory will cost 400 million Swiss francs ($306.4 million).

"The relative valuation of Genentech is three times the average of the mainstream pharmaceutical sector," wrote Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch analysts Karl Heinz Koch and Bob Pooler. "This pushes Roche's multiples to a premium of 50 percent relative to peers."



The move is a necessary one for Roche if it is to take full advantage of the growing demand for Genentech's drugs.



On June 17, Genentech announced its purchase of Biogen Idec's 60-acre factory in Oceanside, California, for $408 million in cash.



The site will be put to work making the colorectal cancer drug Avastin. However, analysts agreed that this deal could only fractionally increase the company's production and more needs to be done (see Genentech Buys Biogen Plant).



Aside from Genentech's notable recent success, Roche has done very well from the South San Francisco-based company. In June 1999, Roche bought all outstanding shares in Genentech at $82.50 each.



The next month, Genentech launched its second IPO, and Roche collected $1.94 billion when the offering opened at $97 per share.



Roche also owns a majority stake in the Japanese biotechnology company Chugai and owns PCR Technology and Boehringer Mannheim as well.

[maywillow] 16/6/2005 07:01

SAN FRANCISCO (AFX) - Roche Holding AG unit Genentech Inc announced the
extension of its current share buyback program by an additional 2 bln usd,
bringing the total value of the repurchase ending June 30, 2006, to 4 bln usd.
The pharma group's board also amended the current repurchase program by
increasing the maximum number of shares that can be repurchased from 50 mln to
80 mln shares, it said.
As of May 31, 2005, Genentech has purchased approximately 29 mln shares of
its common stock under the present programme at an aggregate cost of
approximately 1.5 bln usd, it added.
Genentech said it intends to use the repurchased stock to offset dilution
caused by the issuance of shares in connection with Genentech's employee stock
plans.
Purchases may be made in the open market or in privately negotiated
transactions from time to time at management's discretion, the company said.
Genentech may also engage in transactions in other of its securities in
conjunction with the repurchase program, including derivative securities, it
added.
at/har

[maywillow] 24/5/2005 12:07

Novartis Lucentis Drug News Helps Roche

Tuesday, May 24, 2005 4:09:25 AM ET
Dow Jones Newswires



0752 GMT [Dow Jones]--Roche (RHHBY) set to benefit more than Novartis (NVS) from results of a phase-III study which shows that eye drug Lucentis is working well, says Karl Heinz Koch at Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch. Novartis develops Lucentis with Genentech (DNA), majority-owned by Roche. Lucentis looks set to dominate market, and take market share from Novartis' Visudine. All is not lost though if trial looking at Lucentis/Visudine combination - results due in 4Q - turns out well. Novartis shares +0.4% at CHF59.70. Roche +0.9% at CHF151.80. (AAG)

[ariane] 16/5/2005 10:17

LONDON (AFX) - Cozart PLC said it has formed a collaborative venture with
The Forensic Science Service to offer services and products in new areas of the
drugs testing market.
Cozart brings an extensive portfolio of products and services including the
Cozart RapiScan on-site oral fluid drug testing system, a range of complementary
on-site urine drug tests, laboratory drug testing kits and analytical services.
The FSS contributes expertise in forensic toxicology, expert analysis and
testimony, particularly in the field of criminal justice.
[e-mail]
slm/

[maywillow] 22/4/2005 10:47

DNA database, 22/04/2005

Austria has become the first country to adopt the charter governing the automated use of and access to the database of DNA profiles at the Interpol General Secretariat.
Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble and Dr Herwig Haidinger, director of the Bundeskriminalamt, formally signed the agreement on 22 April.
Of the 41 Interpol member countries with databases of DNA profiles, 29 now submit their data to Interpol. All member countries wishing to access Interpol's automated database, the software for which is being developed jointly by the General Secretariat and Interpol Vienna, must now also adopt the International DNA Gateway Charter.
The charter outlines the rules for the use of the database, called the DNA Gateway. It stipulates that, among other things, member countries retain ownership of their data, and control its use and access in accordance with their national laws.
Secretary General Noble applauded the signing of the agreement by Austria, which maintains the third largest DNA profile database in Europe after the UK and Germany.
'As the first country to adopt the charter, Austria recognises that Interpol's DNA data protection satisfies the highest of standards – standards which Austria helped Interpol to develop,' Secretary General Noble said.
When it is completed, member countries will be able to submit a search request to the DNA Gateway via I-24/7, Interpol's secure global police communications system. The DNA Gateway functions as an autonomous database, meaning it is not linked to Interpol's other databases, and submitted profiles do not contain any nominal information on individuals.
The new automated system called for more stringent privacy and security safeguards than the previous method, which was carried out manually at the General Secretariat in Lyon, France, said Werner Schuller, head of identification services at Interpol.

Higher grade

'The nature of DNA information requires a higher grade of protection, and automation requires an elevated level of security,' he said. 'This automated system marks the beginning of a new era in data exchange for Interpol.' Dr Haidinger said the development of the automated database demonstrates the organisation's commitment to fighting international crime. 'No single country can fight (all) crimes on its own. Interpol is connecting the police know-how of its 182 member countries and working toward common security,' he said.


Source:

[maywillow] 19/4/2005 07:29

(updates with more details on first quarter sales numbers)
ZURICH (AFX) - Roche Holding AG first quarter sales numbers beat market
consensus, rising 17 pct in local currencies to 8.090 bln sfr compared to
consensus of 7.680 bln, thanks to better-than-expected pharma sales.
Pharma sales rose 22 pct in local currencies to 6.155 bln sfr, beating
consensus of 5.620 bln, while diagnostics sales were weaker than expected,
however, rising 4 pct in local currencies to 1.935 bln, against consensus of
1.972 bln.
The Swiss group raised its full year guidance for its pharma division,
saying it now expects sales in local currencies to grow at a double digit rate,
above the global market average, and an operating margin before exceptional
items in line with or better than 2004's margin.
Previous guidance was for pharma sales growth to outpace the global market
and for a flat operating margin.
In diagnostics it expects an acceleration of sales growth, particularly in
the second half, and reiterated its goal of a 26 pct operating margin before
exceptional items in 2006.
Overall the group still expects "balanced financial income" this year.
First quarter pharma sales growth was three times the global average, Roche
said, resulting in "significant market share gains" for the group.
Growth was driven primarily by the division's oncology products such as new
cancer treatments Avastin and Tarceva, co-developed with Genentech Inc, as well
as by a quadrupling of sales of flu drug Tamiflu.
Tamiflu sales were boosted by the severity of the 2004-5 flu season,
especially in Japan, and by early orders by governments as they stockpile the
drug against a possible flu pandemic.
Further large government orders -- some countries are buying enough to treat
20-25 pct of their population -- will be delivered in phases over the next two
years and then recorded as sales, Roche said.
scs/jfr

[ariane] 15/4/2005 09:44

Roche Drug Avastin Peak Sales Seen CHF10B

Friday, April 15, 2005 4:03:32 AM ET
Dow Jones Newswire



0758 GMT [Dow Jones]--Additional use of Avastin in breast cancer would boost peak sales of Roche (RHHBY) and Genentech (DNA) drug to more than CHF10B from around CHF7.2B, says Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch analyst. Companies said Avastin shows promise in breast cancer but won't unveil details on study before ASCO meeting in May. Roche rated at buy and target price lifted to CHF160 from CHF150. Trades +2.5% at CHF135.10. (AAG)