Manteia Predictive Medicine
Encyclopedia
"Manteia Predictive Medicine S.A." (initially incorporated under the name "GenInEx S.A.") was a start-up company created in November 2000 as a spin-off of Serono
, a Swiss based biotechnology company, now part of Merck-Serono, and private founders. Its aim was to provide preventive and curative treatment guidelines for common and complex diseases. These guidelines were envisaged as composed of two parts:
The company was basing its strategy on the so called "DNA colony sequencing" technology, a proprietary massive parallel sequencing
technology whose development had been initiated in late 1996 at Glaxo-Welcome's Geneva Biomedical Research Institute (GBRI), by Dr Pascal Mayer and Dr Laurent Farinelli. This work has been protected by several patents and patents applications , publications and invited oral communications at international conferences from 1998 to 2001.
By the end of 2003, while the company was progressing along its plans towards realizing an industrial instrument capable of sequencing
a complete human genome in approximatively 24h, strategic considerations led the main shareholder (Serono
) to sell Manteia's technology to UK based "Solexa Ltd", now part of Illumina (company)
, and to shut down Manteia's operations.
Serono
Serono is a biotechnology company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The company was founded as the Serono Pharmacolodgical Institute by Cesare Serono in 1906 in Italy. A key step in its development was the discovery of a method of extracting urinary gonadotropins by Dr Piero Donini allowing...
, a Swiss based biotechnology company, now part of Merck-Serono, and private founders. Its aim was to provide preventive and curative treatment guidelines for common and complex diseases. These guidelines were envisaged as composed of two parts:
- a "personal genome card" containing the entire genomeGenomeIn modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
sequence of the person holding the card, - an Internet link to a treatment database to be interrogated at the doctor's practice.
The company was basing its strategy on the so called "DNA colony sequencing" technology, a proprietary massive parallel sequencing
Massive parallel sequencing
Massive Parallel Sequencing is a term used to describe several revolutionary approaches to DNA sequencing, the so-called next-generation sequencing technologies or second generation sequencing. These sequencing technologies have emerged in late 1996 an have become commercially available since 2005...
technology whose development had been initiated in late 1996 at Glaxo-Welcome's Geneva Biomedical Research Institute (GBRI), by Dr Pascal Mayer and Dr Laurent Farinelli. This work has been protected by several patents and patents applications , publications and invited oral communications at international conferences from 1998 to 2001.
By the end of 2003, while the company was progressing along its plans towards realizing an industrial instrument capable of sequencing
Sequencing
In genetics and biochemistry, sequencing means to determine the primary structure of an unbranched biopolymer...
a complete human genome in approximatively 24h, strategic considerations led the main shareholder (Serono
Serono
Serono is a biotechnology company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The company was founded as the Serono Pharmacolodgical Institute by Cesare Serono in 1906 in Italy. A key step in its development was the discovery of a method of extracting urinary gonadotropins by Dr Piero Donini allowing...
) to sell Manteia's technology to UK based "Solexa Ltd", now part of Illumina (company)
Illumina (company)
Illumina, Inc. is a company incorporated in April 1998 that develops, manufactures and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. Using its technologies, the company provides a line of products and services that serve the sequencing, genotyping and...
, and to shut down Manteia's operations.