Genome

J. Craig Venter, the brash scientist who gained international fame when his upstart Celera Genomics Group sequenced the human genome, has left as the company's president as it seeks a leader better equipped for its new mission focused on pharmaceuticals. A number of analysts greeted Venter's departure as a positive for the Rockville-based company, saying Celera's mission as a discoverer of drugs and diagnostics is far different from when Venter co-founded the company in 1998 and led its sequencing efforts.

Celera Genomics Group appears assured of its place in history with tomorrow's announcement that the assembly of the human genome - the genetic instructions for creating and running a human body - is largely complete. Now it faces what might be an even greater challenge: turning scientific triumph into profits. Celera, which is based in Rockville, and the rival public Human Genome Project will jointly announce the milestone in Washington shortly after noon tomorrow in a public demonstration of harmony after months of mutual recrimination.

Human Genome Sciences Inc.'s fourth-quarter loss widened to $59.8 million, but the Rockville-based company said yesterday that it has enough cash to fund its drug-development efforts for at least several more years. The company has $1.5 billion in cash and short-term investments available to finance clinical trials on eight drugs and secure a manufacturing facility to help produce the ones that make it to market. The ambitious construction plans are forcing the company to set aside a growing amount of cash as collateral for the off-balance-sheet deals that back them.

A Rockville biotech firm is one-third of the way through the first phase of recording all of the genetic information in the DNA of the mouse, a step that could aid medical research and prove critical in understanding human genes. "The availability of the mouse genome is crucial to understanding the human genome," said J. Craig Venter, president and chief scientific officer of Celera Genomics Group. To determine what a mouse gene does, scientists routinely disable a single gene in an embryonic mouse and see what happens to the developing animal.

Human Genome Sciences Inc. said yesterday that it sold 11 million of its shares in a public offering at $75 per share, raising about $825 million. The company had registered in September with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell up to $1 billion worth of securities from time to time. The $75-per-share offering was made under that "shelf" registration. The Rockville-based developer of gene-based drugs said it plans to use the proceeds to accelerate a range of projects, including clinical drug trials, research, acquisitions and expansion of development and manufacturing facilities.

Human Genome Sciences Inc. saw its stock rise 11 percent yesterday after the biotechnology company announced that SmithKline Beecham Corp. had opted to jointly develop and commercialize the Rockville firm's most advanced drug. "We're looking forward to working with [SmithKline] on this drug," said Kate de Santis, Human Genome's director of corporate communications. The drug in question is called Repifermin, which has demonstrated positive indications during early Phase II clinical trials involving patients with venous ulcers, a type of lesion.

Shares of Human Genome Sciences Inc. climbed more than 14 percent yesterday on news that a heart-disease drug discovered with the company's help had shown promise in early tests on people. The drug, known as SB-435495, lowers levels of an enzyme associated with the formation of plaque in blood vessels. It was discovered by GlaxoSmithKline PLC, of the United Kingdom, using Human Genome's vast database of genes. Shares of Human Genome rose $7 to close at $55.81 on the news, which the Rockville company announced after the close of trading Friday.

Rivals in the sometimes acrimonious race to sequence the human genome are working together to unravel the genomic software powering the rat, an animal often used as a model to help understand disease in people, the National Institutes of Health announced yesterday. Celera Genomics Group, which recently published its human genome sequence in the journal Science, and the Baylor College of Medicine, a key sequencing center for the rival publicly funded project that published in Nature, have been awarded two new grants totaling $58.5 million to help sequence the rat. The awards, $21 million of which will go to Celera over the next two fiscal years, are meant to speed up a publicly funded rat DNA-sequencing project begun at the end of the 1999 fiscal year.

After months of fitful negotiation that seemed to flame out in a final angry exchange in February, the two sides racing to decode the human DNA have contrived a last-minute truce. The first element of the resurrected pact is likely to be a joint announcement next week of the effective completion of the genome. Although it is too late for a pooling of DNA sequencing efforts, the truce will include agreement for the competitors to publish their genome findings in the same issue of a journal.

Shares of Human Genome Sciences Inc. jumped nearly 10 percent yesterday after the Rockville company announced that it had gained exclusive rights to an antibody with the promise to treat HIV/AIDS. The biotechnology company also said it plans to move several of its drugs to the next stage of clinical trials by the end of the year. "This moves us more toward our ultimate goal of creating drugs to address medical needs," said William A. Haseltine, chairman and chief executive officer. "It advances us to our primary goal, to bring drugs to patients."