Overview

Incyte was founded in 1991 and went public two years later. The company provides genomics technologies and products to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries to help prevent, diagnosis and treat disease.

Described by Incyte as “the world’s most extensive source of human gene information,” its LifeSeq Gold database provides genomic data and associated full-length clone reagents for drug discovery. It is Incyte’s most powerful human gene transcript database.

Incyte has made several acquisitions since its inception: Combion Inc., Genome Systems Inc., Synteni Inc., Hexagen Inc. and, most recently, Proteome Inc., completed in December 2000.

In early 2001, Incyte settled patent infringement lawsuits filed by Gene Logic, giving Gene Logic a nonexclusive license to practice the technology described in the patents in question. Financial terms were not disclosed. In December 2001, Incyte and Affymetrix Inc. settled all existing infringement litigation between the companies. The first lawsuit involved several of Affymetrix’s microarray-related patents and the second involved Incyte’s RNA amplification patents. The companies agreed to cross-licenses under their respective intellectual property portfolios. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Incyte formed several agreements in 2001, including a partnership with Oxagen Ltd. to study to the genetics of osteoporosis, a collaboration with Lexicon Genetics Inc. to apply the technologies and intellectual properties of both companies to accelerate the development of therapeutic protein drug products, and a collaboration with Medarex Inc. to develop fully human antibody therapeutics. Also, the company continued its business of providing companies access to its genomic databases by signing several agreements in that area.

The last quarter of 2001 saw Incyte officially open an office in Tokyo and in November, the company named Paul Friedman its new CEO.

Partners

Current partners include Agilent Technologies Inc., AGY Therapeutics Inc., Biogen Inc., Cambria Biosciences, Corixa Corp., Eisai, Genentech Inc., Genomic Health Inc., Microbia Inc., Exelixis Pharmaceuticals Inc., Microcide Pharmaceuticals Inc., Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., Motorola Inc., Oxagen Ltd., Paradigm Genetics Inc., Sankyo Co., Sepracor Inc., Syngenta Ltd. and Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Alliance partners include Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Corning Inc., Galapagos Genomics NV, Genicon Sciences Corp., Iconix Pharmaceuticals Inc., Lexicon Genetics Inc., Motorola Inc., NEN Life Science Products, Odyssey Pharmaceuticals Inc., Sequenom Inc., IBM, Network Appliance, Secant Technologies, Silicon Genetics and Spotfire Inc.