Biochips, the pharmaceutical equivalent of the microprocessor, long forecast to become the next potentially multi-billion dollar market (CI No 3,154), are about to hit the market in a big way, according to a new report from Californian market analysts, Frost & Sullivan Inc. Biochips are microprocessor sized arrays coated with solutions that react to the presence and sequence of the four genetic base markers, Adenine, Guanine, Thymine and Cytosine, and are used to detect the DNA makeup of a cell. They consist of squares of glass with masks of DNA fibers built up in a similar way to the masks of a silicon chip. With development potential in clinical diagnostics (which strain of virus?), disease management (charting and pre-empting the course of disease) and gene-therapy where the chip would be used to substantially cut the development costs of new drugs, the market is said to be at least as big as that for the microprocessor. The technology began in 1990 when the Human Genome Project was begun and the first Biochip was produced in 1996 by Santa Carla based Affymetrix. That company recently secured funding of $92m venture capital from a zero revenue base, and now leases a former microprocessor plant from National Semiconductor Corp, have found that Biochips, like silicon chips, are evolving in accordance to Moores Law, which predicts a doubling of performance every two years. With a host of small garage start-ups with jargon jigsaw names like Hyseq Inc, of Sunnyvale, California, Synteni Inc of Fremont, California and Nanogen Inc of San Diego, California, and the presence of computing giants Hewlett Packard Co, all said to be jockeying to become the Biochip Intel, industry watchers can expect an eerie sense of deja vu over the coming years. And following on from their silicon equivalents, the lawsuits have already started. In March, Hyseq filed a patent infringement suit against Affymetrix.
