Munich

Latvia has become the latest small European country to seek to gather genetic information on its population, in an attempt to entice the interest of international researchers and biotechnology firms.

A law being considered there would set guidelines for collecting medical and genomic information from the population, as well as data on its lifestyle. The guidelines are based on those used in neighbouring Estonia, where a similar programme is under way. Iceland has already developed a more ambitious and controversial project (Nature 396, 395; 1998), giving one company, deCODE, rights to its genetic data.

Capital gains? The Latvian capital Riga hopes to benefit from the information initiative. Credit: STEVE RAYMER/CORBIS

Latvia, with a population of 2.4 million, has a very small human-genetics research programme. The new initiative would allow this to be extended, as well as developing gene associations that might interest drug companies, says Elmars Grens, a molecular biologist at the University of Latvia in Riga, who helped to instigate it.

Grens is also co-founder of a start-up company called GENDP, which he hopes will win the contract for the high-throughput genotyping. The law has the support of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. Its vice-president, Juris Ekmanis, says it will mean a lot for Latvian science.

Grens says that a three-year pilot study, recruiting 40,000 patients, could start in 2002 if the law is passed, as many expect, by the end of this year.

Kári Stefánsson, director of deCODE Genetics, the company that controls much of Iceland's national genetic information programme, welcomed the Latvian initiative, but warned that “these initiatives are not easily turned into business”.