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http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=12929&hed=SNPs+Unravel+Genetics%2C+Drugs+§or=Regions&subsector=Asia

According to Doug Farrell, vice president of investor relations at Affymetrix, one of Perlegen?s biggest successes is its selection by The International HapMap Project to produce its second-phase haplotype map?or HapMap for short. A haplotype is a region of a chromosome with a group of associated SNP variations. The project builds upon the work of the Human Genome Project and hopes to speed the discovery of genes related to common diseases such as asthma, diabetes, and cancer, by identifying SNPs.

For the first phase of the HapMap Project, officials funded San Diego-based Illumina, South San Francisco-based ParAllele (recent acquired by Affymetrix), and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. For the second phase, it was cheaper to work with Perlegen, despite the costs associated with switching technology platforms.

Lisa Brooks, the program director of the genetic variation program at the National Human Genome Research Institute, says that Perlegen?s application for the project was definitely the best.

?It?s very high quality, it?s a very flexible platform, and it was very cheap.? So much cheaper, in fact, that the HapMap?s original ambitions of genotyping between 600,000 and 1.5 million SNPs with its available budget were upgraded. The project is now attempting about 5 million SNPs in order to produce a genetic map with 4 million SNPs on it; the work should be finished in October.

posted by avilella  # 3:08 PM