Saturday, April 13, 2002

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The Scientist Once Promising Proteomics Market Sags
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"The once white-hot investment climate for proteomics has cooled, sending companies scrambling to recast themselves. Biotech analysts and investors say interest in proteomics companies peaked about a year ago with a rash of them competing in the technology and database sectors. In Europe, proteomics companies have also experienced a downturn, with biotech stocks falling 40% from their peak in 2000. Developing a new generation of technology and digitally mapping the proteome was, relatively speaking, the easy part.

Investors now dismiss such technology and database products as low-profit commodities."

redux [12.20.01]
BioMedNet Proteomics? Great label! (But what is it?)
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""Just because you use a protein doesn't make you a proteomics researcher," Joshua LaBaer, director of the Institute of Proteomics at Harvard Medical School, told BioMedNet News.

After the success of genomics, "everyone wants to think of proteomics as the next great science," but calling themselves proteomics researchers "is not really fair," LaBaer said. "A lot of people who claim to do genomics aren't genomic researchers either," he added. "They are just studying gene sequences.""

redux [12.12.01]
Science High-Speed Biologists Search for Gold in Proteins
[ summary can be viewed for free once registered ]

"Proteomics aims to chart the ebb and flow of tens of thousands of proteins at once to produce snapshots of life inside cells. The technology to pull it off doesn't exist yet, however, and the competition is stiff for those proteins that can be nabbed using current methods. But this young field is growing up fast. This special News Focus looks at the promise and roadblocks of biology's latest wellspring. The package includes profiles of GeneProt, the biggest proteomics test-bed to date, and Stephen Burley , a crystallographer who is leaving academia to direct research at a small start-up company. Other stories discuss the potential of protein chips for new diagnostics and research tools and the problems faced by companies attempting to patent proteins."

redux [08.15.01]
GenomeWeb Study Foresees Proteomics Market Growing to $5.6B by 2006

"A new study of the proteomics market forecast that the proteomics market would grow nearly six-fold to $5.6 billion by 2006 from $963 million in 2000.

In its report, consultancy firm Frost & Sullivan said the increase would be driven by a shift towards the analysis of proteomes following the discovery that the human genome contains fewer genes than originally predicted.

"Proteomics adds value to drug discovery by charting the distribution of proteins, identifying and characterizing proteins of interest, and elucidating the participation of proteins in biochemical pathways boosting the number of potential targets around which lead compounds can be designed and screened," Eric Gay, a Frost & Sullivan analyst, said in a statement."

redux [07.11.01]
Scientific American The Post-Genome Project

"Their bold proclamation has raised a few eyebrows in the scientific community. "It's easy to say that you'll complete a comprehensive proteome map," notes Marc Vidal of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "But none of us knows what that means." There may be only one genome, but when it comes to the proteome, different proteins can be more or less active in different cells at different times during development, under different physiological conditions or in different disease states. The proteome's nature "makes it hard to define what we're doing--not just Myriad, but all of us," remarks Joshua LaBaer, director of the Institute of Proteomics at Harvard Medical School. "There's no such thing as a human proteome," adds Keith L. Williams, CEO of Proteome Systems, headquartered in Sydney, Australia. Look at the liver, for example, he says: "After a glass of red wine, you'll have a different proteome."

redux [06.20.01]
Forbes Proteins Are Back To Confuse Investors

"Scientists thought about trying to catalogue all the proteins in the body a decade ago.

But it seemed impossible, and was therefore impossible to fund. Researchers moved on to the much simpler job of sequencing the human genome.

They were right to do so. Cataloguing proteins turns out to be downright confusing. Lately, more and more biotech companies are entering a field they call "proteomics," an ugly word searching for a focus group."

redux [03.13.01]
The Scientist Is a Human Proteome Project Next?
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"A commonly expressed opinion is that a single Human Proteome Project can never match HGP's success. Eric S. Lander , director of the Whitehead Center for Genome Research in Cambridge, Mass., notes that biologists simply don't know how to characterize the proteome "from end to end, nailing every protein. The tools are not ready. And it's not clear that [such a project] makes sense." He contrasts proteomics to HGP where "there is a certain fixed number of base pairs--about three billion--and we were going to get them all. And so it had a beginning and an end to it."

redux [01.31.01]
GenomeWeb Proteomics Effort Shouldn't Mimic Genome Project, Experts Say

"Can sequencing do for the proteome what it did for the genome?

On Wednesday, a number of world-renowned researchers in the field of proteomics issued a resounding " no."

"When a company has phenomenal success with strategy A, you want to do strategy A on the next subject," said John Richards, a professor of organic and biochemistry at California Institute of Technology, referring to current corporate attempts to map the proteome.

"This doesn't work," he said."