Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. has agreed to provide funding fordevelopment of a new gene sequencing technology underdevelopment by SEQ Ltd., a privately held company in Princeton,N.J.

Financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed. Theagreement marks the first corporate partnership for SEQ, which wasfounded in 1987 and received its start-up financing from JohnstonAssociates, a Princeton, N.J.-based venture capital firm.

The collaboration also is a first for New York-based Bristol-MyersSquibb with a gene sequencing company.

William Dunnet, Bristol-Myers Squibb's public affairs manager, saidthe company has in-house gene sequencing capabilities, but SEQ'stechnology is based on a faster and cheaper method.

Richard Horan, SEQ's president and CEO, said the technology iscalled "single molecule sequencing by fluorescence" and is differentfrom other gene sequencing technologies, such as sequencing-by-hybridization, multiplex sequencing and the ABI automatedsequencers developed by Applied Biosystems Inc., a division ofPerkin-Elmer Corp., of Norwalk, Conn.

Horan, who is affiliated with Johnston Associates, said SEQ'stechnology uses "ultra-sensitive fluorescence" to detect "singlenucleotides cleaved from an extended DNA molecule by a highly-processive exonuclease." The technology still is in the developmentstage, he said, adding that it is designed to sequence genes a"thousand times faster" than current technologies.

The agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb does not restrict SEQ innegotiating with other drug companies for use of its technology.

Horan said SEQ's intentions are to set itself up as a "geneticinformation business," providing gene sequencing andbioinformatics services to pharmaceutical and biotechnologycompanies in an attempt to discover new genes and drug targets.

In addition to initial financing from Johnston Associates, SEQ hasreceived equity investments, but Horan declined to reveal total fundsraised.

The company was founded by Kevin Ulmer, whose backgroundincludes vice president of advanced technology with Genex Corp., ofGaithersburg, Md., and founding director of the Maryland-basedCenter for Advanced Research in Biotechnology. Ulmer is SEQ'schief scientific officer and executive vice president. n

-- Charles Craig

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