Celera to Quit Selling Genome Information
By ANDREW POLLACK

Celera Genomics, which raced with the publicly financed Human Genome Project to decipher the human DNA sequence, has decided to abandon the business of selling genetic information. The company said yesterday that it was discontinuing its genome database subscription business and putting the information into the public domain.

Celera succeeded in signing up some subscribers to its genome database, but the company is still losing money and it never quite calmed critics who argued that fundamental information about basic human biology should be openly available to all.

Originally led by the maverick scientist J. Craig Venter, Celera's race with the Human Genome Project ended in a sort of tie announced at a White House ceremony in 2000.

But Celera's effort to become the "Bloomberg of biology" by selling its data faltered quickly because the public project was offering much the same information to scientists free of charge. In 2002, Celera ousted Dr. Venter, de-emphasized the information business and began trying to develop drugs instead.

Celera has continued to provide the information to a dwindling number of existing subscribers, and those subscriptions, costing thousands of dollars for a single academic scientist to millions of dollars a year for a big drug company, have provided the bulk of its revenue. But Celera said it would discontinue the service, called the Celera Discovery System, after most of the remaining contracts expire by the end of June.

About 25 companies and 200 academic institutions subscribed to Celera's service at its peak; the company would not say how many subscribers were left.