Motorola Making DNA Chips

Motorola's branding revolves around wireless communications, from big
things
like satellite-linking stations down to home networking and cellphones.
But the US-based communications company is also interested in the
small things, as demonstrated by a just-signed development agreement
with Compugen Ltd., a Tel Aviv, Israel-based
biotechnology firm.

Motorola and Compugen have linked up to make and market DNA microchips,
tiny microcircuits loaded with bits of genetic material rather than
electronic circuits.

The DNA "probes," as they are also called, allow scientists and
biomedical professionals to perform large numbers of tests in a faction of
the time needed to carry out the same experiments using conventional
means.

"Putting one of these probes on a piece of glass or other medium," says
Compugen's Dr. Michal Preminger, "allows you to compare normal tissues
with genetic material from people affected by disease, and determine
the mutations by seeing the differences between the two." These
comparisons, Preminger says, can be used in the study of immune
system disorders, cancer, diabetes, and even the effects of aging.

In the past, Motorola's BioChips Systems subsidiary, founded in
1998, has partnered with a number of other technology providers,
including Connecticut-based Packard BioScience Co., the U.S. Argonne
National Laboratory and the Russian Academy of Science's Englehardt
Institute of Molecular Biology.

Preminger says that Compugen's proprietary DNA chip-design tools and
its LEADS platform - an algorithm-based technology that analyzes
genomic and protein-sequence data - will enhance researchers' ability
to pinpoint genes for study and also to splice variants of the genes.

Preminger declined to disclose the value of the agreement with
Motorola, an industry giant with 1999 revenues of $33.1 billion. But
the potential of biochips has been touted for some time. About a year
ago, a survey of market research and brokerage firms reportedly put
the immediate biochips market at as much as $1 billion - with the
potential to expand to $40 billion by 2010.

Compugen combines mathematics and computer science with
molecular biology in a field called computational genomics, to
develop products that speed up drug development, therapeutics,
diagnostics and agricultural products. The company's clients include
the Merck, Pfizer and Monsanto pharmaceutical companies, Amgen
and Human Genome Sciences.