CELERA GENOMICS GROUP - APPLERA CORP., Rockville, Md., a provider of genomic and related medical and agricultural information, said it had sold its AgGen animal-gene business to MetaMorphix Inc., a closely held company in Savage, Md., that makes genetic technologies to improve livestock production.
Known for its fiber optics, the Corning, N.Y.-based glass concern has been getting into the gene chip business, which was formerly dominated by Santa Clara, Calif.-based Affymetrix.
But it is not clear what effect this settlement will have on the gene chip business.
Affymetrix has dominated the gene chip business, helped in part by a strong patent portfolio.
Oxford has said it wanted to break up what it has described as Affymetrix's patent stranglehold on the gene chip business, which Oxford claims has kept prices high for the chips and limited their use.
Celera will continue to receive royalties from the gene database business, and to maintain the gene databases themselves.
Once he did become part of the gene-sequencing business, he had plenty of radical ideas and an abundance of energy, but this didn't stop his grant applications being turned down for his supposed lack of expertise.
In a bid to bolster its drug discovery efforts, the biotechnology giant Amgen said on Monday that it would pay $415 million to acquire deCODE Genetics, a gene-hunting business known for its headline-grabbing discoveries linking genetic variations to disease.
Most people who become rich or advance human well-being do so using other peoples' ideas or those that can be observed in nature -- those people may develop the ideas and give them a tangible incarnation in products and the vehicles to replicate them; but the source of the riches they create is mainly the business gene or collection of business genes they appropriated from elsewhere.
Angling to be the go-to marketplace for these gene-based businesses, Helix, the spin out from genetic testing research and technology giant Illumina, has held a first close on a planned $200 million funding round led by new investor DFJ Growth.
Celera, based in Rockville, Md., said it would cut 132 jobs associated with gene sequencing, the business on which it was founded and which helped speed the mapping of the human genome.
