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SmithKline Beecham, which reached a $125-million agreement in 1993 with the gene sequencing company Human Genome Sciences (HGS), has suspended its use of that company's gene sequence database. The pharmaceutical company claims it has already exhaustively milked the database, and that other high-quality sequence data are increasingly available in the public domain.

SmithKline Beecham (SB), which is engaged in merger talks with Glaxo Wellcome (see above), has already identified more than 3,000 genes from the HGS database, according to Alain Archer, an SB spokesman. He points out that SB also recouped much of its original investment in a $140 million deal agreed in 1996 that opened up HGS databases to Schering-Plough, Synthelabo and Takeda Industries. “SB felt that it needed to [pause] and study the targets we have already identified, rather than just searching for more,” he says.

Also, says Archer, the increasing volume of gene sequence data available in the public domain means that the debate has changed since SB signed its original agreement with HGS in 1993. In particular, this has rendered increasingly unacceptable the stringent terms imposed by HGS at the time, such as the right to royalties on products developed from sequences, and a requirement that researchers wishing to gain access to the database should give HGS an exclusive option on patents resulting from their research.

The restrictions imposed by HGS resulted in a vigorous debate about whether the human genome should be mapped in the private or public domain (see Nature 371, 365; ).

John Sulston, director of Britain's Sanger Centre, argues that this debate is now going in the direction of those who wish to see the venture being primarily public-domain. “The public databases are being refined and added to by researchers all over the world, and are of very high quality; it is inevitable that the public domain will win under these circumstances because it becomes a much richer resource, and that is what we are now seeing.”

The public-versus-private dispute “is now water under the bridge”, says Richard Blevin, head of bioinformatics at Merck Sharpe and Dohme — a company that has backed public domain sequencing. Blevin argues that gaining access to sequence data is “no longer the issue” that it was a few years ago and that companies are focusing their efforts on the more difficult issue of the targets.

HGS itself has become a less prominent player in the sequencing business, following the split last year with its non-profitmaking partner, the Rockville-based Institute for Genomic Research, which has since made its sequence databases publicly available. Gene sequences are now a minor part of HGS's business, the company having focused on genome-based drugs.