美国Celera Genomics Group
实验室测试产品与疾病管理服务供应商Celera Corp.(CRA)
尽管几个月前人类基因组测序完成的时候,Celera公司的总裁Craig Venter宣称,他的下一个目标是人类蛋白质组的测序,但在上周,Venter却宣布他不再看好蛋白质组的测序研究,他有了另外新的目标。在谈到由Myriad公司,日立公司和Oracle公司共同投资一亿八千五百万美元并预计于2004年完成人类蛋白质组测序的计划时,Venter说道：“我们并不认为完成对蛋白质的笼统测序有太大的意义”,Venter还认为该项计划的能否按时完成值得怀疑,而且即使能够完成也没有太大的实用价值。令人不解的是,这些话似乎与Venter和他的同事们数月前对蛋白质组测序研究的评价大相径庭。Venter和他的副手们曾经在记者招待会上透露作为Celera寻找药物设计新靶点工作的一部分,公司将参与蛋白质组的测序研究。在3月24日的《科学》杂志上,一篇题为“这次还会是Celera吗？”的文章介绍了Celera公司的蛋白质组研究计划,称Celera将鉴定生物体中表达的各种蛋白质并通过研究它们的变化来确定蛋白质在疾病发生发展中的作用。在这篇文章里,作者引用了Venter的话：“我们将研究每一种器官,组织和细胞”,Venter还说Celera拥有一流的设备和最大的数据库,有能力每天鉴定一百万种蛋白质。另外,在去年7月17日BBC在线的一篇题为“Celera着手下一步的研究”的文章报道说在英国伯明翰举行的第18届国际生物化学与分子生物学会议上,Venter说Celera下一步的计划是鉴定参与人体内所有化学反应的每一种蛋白质。在写给GenomeWeb网站的一封信里,Celera公司的新闻发言人Heather Kowalski说：“尽管在蛋白质组研究计划中我们的目标是广泛性的,但是我们的重点放在研究疾病相关蛋白上。正如Venter先生所说,我们认为蛋白质组与基因组是有差别的,基因组是稳定的,而蛋白质组是变化的,在各种组织细胞中有着不同的情况,因此对蛋白质组的大规模测序不是明智和科学的。”


Celera is a healthcare business that uses knowledge of human variability to provide new tests and services to personalize disease management. Our Products business develops and manufactures molecular diagnostic products that are used by hospitals and other clinical laboratories to detect, characterize, monitor and select treatment for disease. We have a distribution agreement with Abbott, through which we develop and commercialize a wide range of molecular diagnostic products, with Abbott serving as the distribution partner.

Our Services business, Berkeley HeartLab, Inc. (BHL), is a high complexity CLIA certified laboratory that offers over 25 clinical diagnostic tests including assays that determine lipoprotein particle size and density based on our proprietary segmented gradient gel electrophoresis technology, along with state-of-the-art genetic testing. These tests identify and characterize risk for cardiovascular disease and help physicians recommend treatment. Our 4myheart centers are staffed with medical professionals who use results from testing at BHL to work with patients, under their physician’s direction, to develop customized regimens for exercise, nutrition, stress management and therapy compliance.

Our internal research and partnering activities fuel the development of new diagnostic tests for personalizing disease management. These new tests are offered as products and/or services.

Celera was founded in 1998 with the mission to sequence the human genome and provide clients with early access to the resulting data. Using state-of-the art sequencing technology supplied by Applied Biosystems and sophisticated internally-developed informatics, Celera pioneered the application of “shotgun” sequencing. While this “shotgun” approach was widely criticized at the time, it has subsequently become a standard method for sequencing complex organisms that is now broadly accepted and routinely used by many of the same scientists who originally scorned the approach. Scores of organisms have now been sequenced using the Celera “shotgun” method.

Celera went on to build a successful database business, providing custom search tools and software that enabled dozens of pharmaceutical companies and hundreds of academic, government and biotech clients to use its findings in biological research. While the Celera database business ultimately became profitable, it was clear by 2000 that this was not a sustaining business model, as the public effort caught up and provided free access to genome sequences.

Celera moved on - both scientifically and commercially. Scientifically, we recognized that understanding complex conditions like Alzheimer’s and cardiovascular disease required a greater understanding of human genetic variability and therefore embarked upon the Applera Genomics Initiative. This involved re-sequencing the genes and regulatory regions of 39 people to develop a catalog of human variation – focused on the parts of the genome that code proteins and are therefore most likely to impact human health. This effort resulted in the identification of over 40,000 novel functional SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms). This work has become a basis for many of the new genetic tests that Celera is developing.

In January of 2006, Celera announced our intention to partner our small molecule drug programs and acquired full rights to Celera Diagnostics, which had previously been run as a joint venture with Applied Biosystems.

Today, Celera is a healthcare company focused on personalizing disease management through diagnostic products and services.