From Robert Hennessy, Genome Therapeutics Corporation, Waltham, Massachusetts
Your editorial “Public good, private gain” and accompanying This Week article (30 September) refer to my company’s work sequencing the genome of Helicobacter pylori. We recognise the critical role played by basic research laboratories studying the molecular biology of H. pylori. We are also aware that advances made by Astra and Genome Therapeutics Corporation in developing new antibiotics or vaccines for H. pylori will owe a debt to this basic research.
We expect to repay this debt by delivering better treatments in a timely fashion. This is why we invested our own money into rapid sequencing of the H. pylori genome, and are in partnership with Astra to funnel that information towards products as rapidly as possible. It is a fact of commercial life that critical information in a highly competitive field such as this must be held in confidence for a time.
The Mycobacterium leprae and M. tuberculosis sequencing at GTC has been pursued under an award from the National Center for Human Genome Research to develop the technology for multiplex sequencing, a rapid sequencing approach based on sample mixing and molecular decoding. The primary goal of this project is to develop faster sequencing technology. Mycobacterial genomes are being sequenced under this project by choice, not by contract, as stated in the article.
All data have been made public within six months of finishing, and are available on our Web site: http://www.cric.com. The latest data are being prepared for submission this month. Twenty M. tuberculosis sequences covering one fifth of the genome are close to completion. We expect to sequence most of the rest over the next 20 months.
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Your editorial highlights an important issue, but I believe the emphasis is misplaced. The problem is not “common good” research being done by private companies; it is the funding reductions hitting public support of such projects. If high risk science is not funded by the public agencies which have traditionally funded such research, it will be done by the private sector which will require a return on its investment.
