To the Editor:

As CEO of the companies involved, I would like to bring to the attention of your readers several inaccuracies in a News article in the March issue entitled 'Resuscitated deCODE refocuses on diagnostics'1. The article erroneously reports that deCODE (Reykjavik, Iceland) “...already shuttered its Emerald Biosciences and Emerald Biostructures drug discovery operations in Bainbridge Island, Washington....” In fact, both Emerald BioSystems (which was misspelled as Emerald Biosciences in the original story) and Emerald BioStructures have never closed—they are vibrant, growing businesses.

Both companies have been continuously operating since 1998 with the same management team. On November 13, 2009, they were sold to a group of investors in Delaware (Beryllium). Emerald BioSystems continues to sell research products for protein crystallization (http://www.emeraldbiosystems.com/) and Emerald BioStructures—which before deCODE's bankruptcy, operated under the name 'deCODE biostructures'—provides collaborative structural biology services to pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies and academic institutions (http://www.emeraldbiostructures.com/).

The two companies also remain active in the Protein Structure Initiative (http://www.structuralgenomics.org/). Emerald BioStructures is the lead organization for the National Institutes of General Medical Sciences–funded Accelerated Technologies Center for Gene to 3D Structure (http://www.ATCG3D.org/) specialized center, and Emerald BioSystems is actively commercializing technologies generated from this center. Emerald BioStructures is also a member of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases–funded Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (http://www.SSGCID.org/), which is solving hundreds of structures of novel anti-infective disease targets every year.