Hyseq Inc., a privately held start-up biotechnology company,said it has completed an initial round of financing for anundisclosed amount in the "seven figures." Financing wasprovided by individual private investors, said Robert Weist, thecompany's acting president.

Hyseq was formed last year to commercialize sequencing byhybridization (SBH) technology. The company received a U.S.patent for the technology in April.

SBH uses short, synthesized stretches of DNA as probes todetermine the presence of these sequences in unknown DNA,and an optical scanner to identify complementary hybrids ofprobes with target DNA. Computational approaches thenassemble the long sequence from lists of the short overlappingsequences found within it.

Weist said Hyseq's closest competitor is Human GenomeSciences Inc. (HGS) of Rockville, Md., which uses automatedlarge-scale gene sequencing. HGS does partial gene sequencingand then uses its proprietary bioinformatics to determine if thegene is novel. Weist said SBH can sequence more rapidly andcost effectively. SmithKline Beecham Corp. is investing $125million in HGS (see BioWorld, Nov. 15, for details).

Hyseq said it is currently in discussions and negotiations withseveral potential strategic partners and licensees. It hastemporary offices in the Chicago law firm of Shefsky & FroelichLtd. Weist said the company plans to set up its headquartersand production facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The company also reported that Anthony Carrano, an associatedirector at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory andprofessor at the University of California, Davis, has joinedHyseq's scientific advisory board. In addition, RaymondBaddour, a co-founder and director of Amgen, is joining Hyseq'sboard of directors. Weist retired from Amgen as a senior vicepresident last year.

-- Brenda Sandburg News Editor

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