Genes on a chip

Companies race to put genes on a chip Rivals up the ante in
effort to develop personalized medicine

Affymetrix's GeneChip contains vital pieces of the 30,000
genes that make up the human genetic code. Several other
companies and research teams have developed similar
technologies.

By By Paul Elias The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO - The
lofty goal of "personalized medicine" is one step closer to
reality, with two companies announcing that they have
successfully placed vital bits of humankind's estimated
35,000 genes on a small glass chip.

Rivals*AffymetrixInc. and Agilent Technologies produced so-
called gene chips - dime-size pieces of glass infused with
genetic material. Until Thursday, Affymetrix and Agilent
needed two chips to hold the same genetic material. Chips
with portions of the genome are now indispensable in biology
laboratories around the world. Now, Affymetrix says
researchers can buy the entire genome for between $300 and
$500 each - roughly half the old price.

"It's a significant milestone," said Affymetrix chief
executive Stephen Fodor. Employing semiconductor
manufacturing technology, workers "print" genes one molecule
at a time onto the glass until they stand up like
microscopic skyscrapers, each about 25 molecules high.

Researchers then drop onto the chips specially tagged RNA,
which serves as the messenger between DNA blueprints and a
cell's protein-making machinery. The portion of a chip on
which genes interact with the RNA will be fluorescent,
highlighting bad genes that may need a closer look.

Rivals in the gene chip industry

The dueling announcements Thursday come on the heels of
similar breakthroughs by Applied Biosystems of Foster City
and Madison, Wis.-based NimbleGen Systems, both of which
said in July they had each created a genome on a chip. In
addition, a research team from two German science institute
made a similar announcement last year.

Because Affymetrix owns 80 percent of the commercial
market, however, its announcement was greeted as an
industry turning point.

The continued packing of more genes into smaller spaces
leads many to believe the gene chip industry will follow its
own Moore's Law, which holds that the processing power of
semiconductor chip doubles every 18 months. While no one
believes gene chips will evolve that quickly, many still
expect big things. Even the chips touted Thursday don't
contain whole genes on them. Instead, they contain vital
pieces of each gene. But more genetic detail is expected to
be added to the chips in coming years, making them more
powerful and versatile.

Today, researchers mostly use the chips to do basic
genetic research.

Scientists believe many diseases are caused by genes
"turning on" when they shouldn't. Knowing this, researchers
can design drugs to attack suspect genes.

Until gene chips came into vogue about five years ago,
genetic scientists slogged slowly through their research,
often investigating one gene at a time. Now they can analyze
thousands of genes simultaneously, more quickly identifying
disease causes.

"We can now look 35,000 at a time," said Harvard Medical
School's Dr. Scott Armstrong. "But we are not using to
dealing in that."

'Sending shivers up my spine'

Some researchers even envision a day when pediatricians and
other physicians are armed with these chips, technically
called microarrays. The hope is that a drop of a newborn's
blood can quickly be converted into a genome on a chip. From
there, a doctor can determine the baby's predilection to
disease and other genetic traits.

"This is starting to get really cool and it's sending
shivers up my spine in a good and bad way," said Dietrich
Stephan of the nonprofit Translational Genomics Research
Institute in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Discovering somebody is likely to suffer an incurable
disease is rife with ethical and philosophical implications,
he said. Stephan is already using gene chips to help
determine the chances of relapse for children whose leukemia
is in remission.

Armstrong and other researchers at Harvard also used gene
chips to show that childhood leukemia comes in at least
two distinct forms, and a human experiment is under way to
test a new drug's effectiveness against the newly
discovered form.

Armstrong isn't as bullish as Stephan because he doesn't
envision the chips being used in the doctor's office
anytime soon. But he does see pathologists and other
doctors soon using gene chips to tailor medicines to
individual genetic makeup.

"That's where this is all going," he said. Armstrong said it
will take some time for scientists to figure out how to
interpret all the data that the gene chips equipped with the
complete genome can spit out.

© 2004 The Associated Press.

A professor asked a student, "If you had a choice between
the oppressed and the oppressor which would you choose." The
student replied, "Neither". The Professor shook his head and
stated, "You don't have a choice." The student paused and
said, "The oppressed".