Many corporations and investors in North America are pouring cash into huge new laboratories and research institutes, in the expectation that the new genome discoveries will revolutionise medicine and diagnosis.
Private companies have already invested billions of dollars in biotech and genomics, and like every additional milestone made in gene research, today's revelations will have far-reaching repercussions on the New York stock exchange.
Much of the research money comes from Wall Street financiers and corporations hoping to make big profits on the findings of the publicly funded Human Genome Project and its corporate rival, Celera Genomics of Rockville, Maryland.
New laboratories being built at several US and Canadian centres are expected to produce a wealth of new medicines and exciting ways of early testing for diseases and tumours, which could prevent millions of deaths worldwide.
"It's a whole new world," said Mr Chi Dang, vice-president for research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, which has just received donations of $100 million and will focus on disease treatments using genetically manipulated human cells. Harvard University is also getting in on the act with an Institute of Proteomics, as the new study is termed.
In Maryland, a new research building will house huge laboratories for a commercial operation known as large-scale proteomics which will compile an index of all human proteins - the cellular agents that could hold the greatest promise for new pharmaceuticals. In Toronto, the giant MDS Proteomics plans to find new drugs tailored to individual needs on the basis of similar research. Three universities in California are collaborating in a new state institute on San Francisco Bay to enhance understanding of proteins and their interactions.
Pharmaceutical companies are expected to pay huge sums to establish if new drugs interfere with desirable proteins and thereby cause side-effects, a process which currently involves expensive and lengthy human testing.
The conventional testing of drugs is at present a $19 billion global market and the time from discovery to market is 10 years. This could be reduced to five, and spark explosive growth in pharmaceuticals. At least six US companies are testing genes to find ways to diagnose heart disease, cervical cancer, skin cancer, colorectal cancer and breast cancer.
Some analysts predict that pharmaceuticals will be the most profitable high-tech sector in the world, now that the code of the human genome has been cracked.
However the US bank, Lehman Brothers, has warned that drug company profits could fall and the cost of prescriptions rise because of soaring bills for the new technology between now and 2005, when the benefits of the recent mapping of human genetic make-up finally emerge. Lehman estimates that the average pharmaceutical company is likely to be working on 500 new drugs a year, compared to 50 five years ago, and most of these will be completely new classes of medicine that will cost millions of dollars to develop. Celera initially limited its goals to selling genetic information to universities and pharmaceutical companies. With other biotech firms announcing plans to convert the new genome data into profit-spinning drugs, its stock fell 86 per cent from an all-time high of $252 a share last February. Celera has since then shifted its focus and plans to become a major player in drug discovery by finding ways to identify new medicines and diagnostic tests. It has been hiring biologists and building a research laboratory to study proteins. Last month it announced a partnership with Compaq and the US Department of Energy to build a new super-computer for analysing biological data.
Celera has two big advantages, according to Fortune magazine, superior technology and cash in the bank. Through refinancing last year when its value was still high, it amassed $1.1 billion in cash to launch its drug programme. Its goal is to identify isolated genes or proteins involved with a specific disease and then do deals with big drug companies.
Celera is currently spending $100 million a year and may not be in profit for some years, but its sales are increasing due to increased demand for the database information. While it lost $28 million in the last quarter of 2000, its revenue rose to $20.3 million for the quarter, a figure which impressed Wall Street.