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Frederick Bourke, a wealthy American industrialist, is preparing to
found the first private company devoted to sequencing DNA on a large
scale. ‘It’s an idea whose time has come,’ says Leroy Hood, a molecular
biologist at the California Institute of Technology and pioneer in developing
automated DNA sequencing technology.

When Bourke’s plans became public last week, controversy immediately
erupted in Britain because the proposed company seemed to threaten the continuation
of a major genome sequencing project at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory
of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge (This Week, last issue).

Key to the company being established is the recruitment of two leading
scientists: John Sulston of the Cambridge laboratory, and Bob Waterston
of Washington University in St Louis. Together they head a collaborative
venture to sequence the DNA of a small nematode worm called Caenorhabditis
elegans. Such a company would ‘drive the technology forward’, Sulston suggests.
‘The US operation, or something else like it, will go ahead no matter what
I do,’ he says.

Hood’s and Sulston’s statements reflect the way DNA sequencing is shifting
into a new phase. Whether the target is the relatively modest genetic sequence
of the nematode, which has 100 million bases, or the mammoth task of the
human genome, which has 3 billion bases, scientists will have to progress
from small-scale sequencing to production-line sequencing. ‘We are reaching
that point now,’ says Sulston.

A year ago, Isidore Edelman of Columbia University, New York, suggested
to Bourke that the time might be right to establish a gene-sequencing business.
‘We still may be a little early, but I don’t mind,’ says Bourke. ‘Like it
or not, there will soon be large-scale DNA sequencing companies. And I want
to be first.’

Bourke and Edelman spent much of the past year travelling around the
US and Europe, trying to get a sense of the possibilities. Edelman contacted
Charles Cantor, a molecular biologist at the University of California in
Berkeley who had played a major role in promoting the human genome initiative
at the US Department of Energy. Cantor then contacted Hood, an influential
figure on many of the scientific panels that acted as midwife to the human
genome initiative. Edelman, Cantor and Hood form the core consultants to
the yet to be incorporated company. Sulston and Waterston were approached
late last year, as potentially the key scientists in the venture. ‘But it
only got really serious this month,’ says Waterston.

Bourke has interests in a number of companies, whose activities include
house building and the manufacture of leather products. He has been involved
in founding several biomedical companies and has made donations to genome
research in academic centres, including Columbia University. Of all the
ventures, the $50 million he proposes to sink into the proposed genome sequencing
company is among the most speculative. Nevertheless, he says he expects
it to become profitable within five years. He admits to being an optimist.
‘Maybe it’ll take longer, but I don’t think so.’

Beginning with a scientific staff of between 60 and 70 people, Hood
estimates that the company would aim to be sequencing 100 million bases
a year within five years. With that kind of technical muscle, the nematode
project would progress much faster than it could with its current funding
sources. ‘I’m puzzled that we are accused of taking projects away from universities,’
says Edelman. ‘If you’re realistic, you can see there’s no prospect of this
kind of work being funded in universities.’

Edelman stresses that there is no certainty that the nematode project
will become part of the company’s initial activity. He does claim, however,
that ‘the company will do more to advance the process of genome mapping
and sequencing than any single university.’

The company plans to make money from sequencing DNA under contract,
by selling technology that it develops, and from diagnostics and therapeutic
techniques arising from DNA sequences it discovers. ‘The sequence information
will be made public very quickly,’ says Bourke, ‘but we will have first
crack at it.

Everyone involved. insists that there will be no secrecy, and no patenting
or copyrighting of sequence information. But fears remain. ‘These are promises
now,’ says Walter Bodmer, head of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London
and president of the Human Genome Organisation. ‘Things can change.’

Dai Rees, secretary of Britain’s Medical Research Council, is particularly
worried about the effect of losing the Cambridge part of the project to
the US. ‘Our concern is not the link with a private company but the danger
that research funded in Britain from public money will not be developed
to the benefit of the British economy.

James Watson, head of the US Human Genome Program, acknowledges the
practical challenge of large-scale sequencing, but believes it is premature
to set up private companies to do it. He expects Bourke’s company, and other
similar ones, to approach the HGP for funds to do sequencing that falls
under the interests of the programme. ‘Yes, I think we would do that,’ admits
Bourke. ‘But those funds won’t be sufficient. We will put in our own money.’

In recent years, Watson has stressed the ethical aspects of holding
information on the human genome. One such is the prospect of people being
refused certain jobs or denied insurance because of a demonstrated susceptibility
to disease. The intrusion of private sequencing companies into this adds
a further twist. ‘How will someone feel about being discriminated against
because of knowledge raised by a company that is becoming rich in the process?’
he asks.

Nevertheless, Watson predicts that before long there will be several
sequencing companies. ‘This is capitalism,’ he says. ‘You can’t stop it.’