Pharmaceutical companies join forces for online genetic database

NEWS The world's biggest pharmaceutical companies have joined forces with the Wellcome Trust to develop an online database of human genetics. The project aims to identify which genes are responsible for diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer's, depression, diabetes and arthritis. It will map out the genetic differences between people, as shown by variations in their DNA. The pharmaceutical companies involved are AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, F.Hoffman-La Roche, Glaxo Wellcome, Hoechst Marion Roussel, Novartis, Pfizer, Searle and SmithKline Beecham. They will form a consortium called SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) to carry out the project. The database is expected to cost $45m (£28m), and take two years to develop. It will then be released onto the Internet, for use by medical researchers worldwide. The consortium's chairman and CEO, Arthur Holden, said: "The SNP Consortium plans to make all the data that it develops publicly available to everyone at no cost. We think it's critically important to do that. Medical research, whether it is in universities or industrial settings, can use this data and develop more medical therapeutics faster. That'll affect disease conditions more than if it's in the hands of the select few, or only those that can afford to get access to it." The project's data management is being run by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US. Michael Morgan, CEO of the Wellcome Trust, said the gene map would go beyond medical tests for single diseases like Cystic Fybrosis. It would enable medical researchers to look at a whole range of differences in people's genetic makeup, simultaneously.