BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Pfizer picks an insulin pathway

July 9, 2001 7:00 AM UTC

Rather than support two growing diabetes research programs, Pfizer Inc. has decided to return the rights to Metabolex Inc.'s insulin resistance genomics program in favor of the partners' more advanced genomics efforts in insulin secretion. According to Metabolex, the move simply reflects the pharma company's desire to develop the riper research program, and is not a comment on the merits of targeting insulin secretion versus insulin resistance.

Under the insulin secretion program, Metabolex is sequencing all beta islet cell genes in humans, rats and mice, and using GeneChips from Affymetrix Inc. (AFFX, Santa Clara, Calif.) to run expression analysis experiments in efforts to identify gene targets. Similarly, in the insulin resistance program Metabolex has sequenced genes from muscle and fat tissues and is using microarrays for expression experiments...