Swiss pharmaceutical maker Roche Holding Ltd. became the seventhbig pharma subscriber to gene discovery information generated byIncyte Pharmaceuticals Inc. and the first to take advantage of thegenomics company's newest data bases.

Neither Roche, of Basel, Switzerland, nor Incyte, of Palo, Alto,Calif., would disclose financial terms of the three-year agreement.Roche will pay annual subscription fees to Incyte, which also willreceive milestone payments and royalties for products based ongenetic information.

Roche and its U.S. subsidiary, Hoffmann-La Roche Inc., of Nutley,N.J., will have access to Incyte's gene sequences and gene expressioninformation, which are contained in its Lifeseq (Library ofInformation for Expressed Sequences) data bases.

Denise Gilbert, Incyte's chief financial officer, said her companyestimates it has sequenced portions of nearly 100,000 genes in thehuman genome.

Most attempts to determine the total number of human genes havesettled in the range of 70,000 to 100,000. However, Gilbert saidIncyte's researchers believe the total is between 100,000 and 150,000because the rate at which unique gene sequences are emerging hasnot slowed as the 100,000 mark approaches.

In addition to subscribing to the Lifeseq data base, Roche is payingfor access to Incyte's new gene mapping and full-length gene cloningtechnology. The former provides chromosomal locations for genesequences and integrates mapping information from public data basesmaintained by academic and government research institutions.

Gilbert said Roche is the first pharmaceutical customer to subscribeto the gene mapping data base, which can help identify disease genesmore quickly. In addition, Roche paid additional fees for five accesssites, the most of any other subscriber.

Incyte was among the first genomics companies to sell non-exclusiverights to its gene sequencing information to pharmaceutical firms foruse in drug discovery.

The other subscribers are Pfizer Inc., of New York; Pharmacia &Upjohn Co., of London; Novo Nordisk A/S, of Bagsvaerd, Denmark;Hoechst Marion Roussel, of Frankfurt, Germany; AbbottLaboratories, of Abbott Park, Ill.; and Johnson & Johnson, of NewBrunswick, N.J.

In January 1996, Incyte said the first six customers, whoseagreements average three years, will pay more than $100 millioncombined to subscribe to the Lifeseq data base and for other services,such as access from multiple sites and creation of custom satellitedata bases. (See BioWorld Today, Jan. 3, 1996, p. 1.)

Incyte's stock (NASDAQ:INCY) closed Thursday at $27.25, up $2. n

-- Charles Craig

(c) 1997 American Health Consultants. All rights reserved.