The drugs companies are facing a massive investment in the task of putting each sequenced gene under the spotlight. They need to discover its role and the protein it makes, then check its potential as a drug target. Although the deal collapsed, others seem sure to follow. That is what's going to be expensive. Hunger for research funds is not the only driving force behind the changes, says Juan Enriquez, a Harvard economist specialising in biomedical research policy.
Companies fear being locked out by their competitors' patents and licensing deals.
One way to avoid this, he says, is to own your competitors. For patients, a major benefit of genomics research will be more effective treatments. But the biggest change, and the most significant for health spending, will come from radically improved preventive medicine. Sequencing the human genome will give doctors and scientists powerful tools for assessing a particular patient's risk of certain diseases. Companies will be able to develop more effective drugs by expressing specific genes in cell cultures and working out the structure of the proteins they produce.