Investment funds finance gene research
On July 14, 2008, a group of Western investors led by Intel Capital Fund announced an investment of $ 100 million in the development of a technology that should allow for the decoding and sequencing of DNA chains on a massive scale.
Investors note that similar technologies exist today, but now it can take several years to compile a genome, and the cost of such a procedure is millions of dollars.
The Pacific Biosciences laboratory, created by a group of companies, will have to present a new technology for ultra-high-speed DNA research and analysis of the obtained data in 2010. In theory, such a system should make it possible to predict many diseases to which a particular person is susceptible, and also provide all the data about the patient's health in order to make an individual course of the most effective treatment for him.
According to Hugh Martin, executive director of Pacific Biosciences, at one time the US government funded the Human Genome Project program, which resulted in a complete human genome. The Human Genome Project completed its work in 2003 and it took 13 years and 450 million dollars to compile a complete "gene map". The task of Pacific Biosciences is to make this procedure thousands of times cheaper and much faster. Ideally, genome sequencing should not exceed 15 minutes.
At the same time, the first Pacific Biosciences products are likely to compile genomes in a few days. The price of such a service in the company has not yet been determined.
In addition to Intel, several large investment funds are also participating in the "gene project", including Deerfield Capital Management LLC; T. Rowe Price Group; Morgan Stanley; FMR LLC; AllianceBernstein Holding LP; Maverick Capital Ltd.; Redmile Group; Alloy Ventures; DAG Ventures; Teachers' Private Capital; Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mohr Davidow Ventures.
Portal "Eternal youth" www.vechnayamolodost.ru based on CyberSecurity materials
15.07.2008