By Randall Osborne

West Coast Editor

SAN FRANCISCO - With more than almost all of the human genome sequenced, Celera Genomics acquired a 47.5 percent equity in Shanghai GeneCore BioTechnologies Co. Ltd., as part of the "globalization" of the effort, said Craig Venter, president and chief scientific officer of Celera.

Celera, an operating group of PE Corp., which also includes Foster City, Calif.-based PE Biosystems Inc., took over the Shanghai GeneCore interest previously owned by Axys Pharmaceuticals Inc., of South San Francisco.

Since PE Biosystems already owns 47.5 percent of Shanghai GeneCore, PE Corp. now controls 95 percent of the overseas firm. Shanghai GeneCore is a genomics service company that has collaborations with Chinese government agencies and research centers. It has a customer base of more than 1,000 academic institutions, hospitals and biopharmaceutical companies in China, Celera said.

"This is a worldwide issue," Venter, a pioneer in gene sequencing, told attendees at the 18th annual Chase H&Q Healthcare Conference.

He said Celera, the name of which is derived from a root meaning "swiftness," is living up to its moniker. "The sequencing phase of the human genome will be competed in June, more than a year and a half ahead of our original schedule," Venter said. (See BioWorld Today, Aug. 7, 1998, p. 1.)

Using technology developed by PE Biosystems, Celera first attacked the Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) genome.

The sequencer used "was a 'breadboard' device 18 months ago, so there was tremendous skepticism about whether the sequencer would work, whether this scale factory could be built, whether in fact our algorithms could be developed to assemble the genome," Venter said.

That's all changed.

"The [fruit fly] genome went together in a very clear-cut fashion," Venter said. Although it's 80 times larger than Hemophilus influenzae, the first genome sequenced five years ago, Celera was able to sequence it in four months.

Like "all the other species ... about half the genes [in the fruit fly genome] are new and of unknown function - which means that with every genome there's going to be a tremendous phase of just understanding some of the basic biology," Venter said.

Celera, of Rockville, Md., began sequencing in September, and what's been completed represents about 97 percent of human genes, and Celera has discovered "tens of thousands" of new ones, Venter said.

"We've sequenced over 5.4 billion base pairs in the last four months, and we're adding 2 billion base pairs per month, roughly, to that," he said. "We found all kinds of new potential therapeutic proteins - interferon, several other categories of secreted proteins."

The work will especially help critical research into single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), Venter said.

"Just one individual will develop 2 [million] to 3 million SNPs," he said. "We already have in the hundreds of thousands in our database. By June, when we've sequenced five individuals, we'll have somewhere between 4 [million] and 12 million SNPs in our database."

Then, Celera will switch to sequencing the mouse genome.

"We've been asked to do dozens of other species, everything from rats to chimpanzees to corn to pine trees to grass to cows to additional insects," Venter said. "The same thing [will happen in gene sequencing] that happened in the microbial universe. By having all this information from different species, it's going to help us understand the human genome even faster."

The conference, which wrapped up Thursday, welcomed about 4,800 registrants, said Carole Newman, spokesperson for the event.

"Clearly, this year marked a watershed, in terms of numbers," Newman told BioWorld Today. Long lines and elbow-to-elbow crowds packed the hallways and conference rooms of the Westin St. Francis downtown at the beginning of the week.

"They didn't all show up at once, but it looked that way on Monday," Newman said.

Celera's stock (NYSE:CRA) closed Thursday at $216.875, up $1.875.

In other news from the conference:

¿ Avant Immunotherapeutics Inc., of Needham, Mass., said Novartis Pharma AG, of Basel, Switzerland, made a $6 million payment to Avant in connection with the license for use of TP10 (soluble complement receptor 1) in the field of transplantation, and an equity investment. Avant also said it completed enrollment in an open-label Phase II trial of TP10 in 15 infants undergoing cardiac surgery requiring cardiopulmonary bypass. The endpoint is reducing consequences of reperfusion injury and improving post-operative outcomes.

¿ Cellomics Inc., of Pittsburgh, said AstraZeneca, of London, adopted the Cellomics High Content Screening technology. The pharmaceutical company will use Cellomics ArrayScan II instruments, assays and informatics products to develop and run advanced assays that will provide information about how potential drugs interact with living cells. Terms were not disclosed.

¿ Inhale Therapeutic Systems Inc., of San Carlos, Calif., and Aventis Behring LLC, formerly Centeon LLC, said the FDA granted orphan designation to a novel inhaleable formulation of Alpha1 proteinase inhibitor for the treatment of congenital emphysema caused by alpha one antitrypsin deficiency. Inhale said patient dosing for a Phase I trial started in December.

¿ LJL Biosytems Inc., of Sunnyvale, Calif., said it added customized algorithms and IT tools, designed to enable automated genotype calling onto its SNP genotyping platform.

¿ The Liposome Co. Inc., of Princeton, N.J., said, after meeting with the FDA, it is taking steps to resubmit its new drug application for Evacet, which an FDA advisory panel in September failed to endorse as a first-line treatment for metastatic breast cancer. The company also said it should report its first profitable year, with earnings of 30 to 33 cents per share for 1999.