BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

HGSI's gene database deadline

April 2, 2001 7:00 AM UTC

On June 30, Human Genome Sciences Inc.'s consortium of partners with access to its database of full-length human mRNA sequences will dissolve, freeing HGSI to repartner the database. With human sequence data increasingly available in the public domain and in other commercial databases, it remains to be seen whether HGSI's database will hold the same allure as it did in the mid-1990s, when the consortium members signed on.

The consortium includes Takeda Chemical Industries Ltd. (Osaka, Japan), which last week announced that it had selected about 100 genes from the database for development as small molecule or antibody therapeutic targets (see B5). The remaining members include GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK, London, U.K.), Schering-Plough Corp. (SGP, Kenilworth, N.J.), Sanofi-Synthelabo (Paris, France) and Merck KGaA (Darmstadt, Germany). ...