DNA: California firm streamlines storage of genetic material

CARLSBAD, Calif. -- Crime labs, drug companies and academic researchers store blood, urine, cheek cells and hair as if they were gold. And in a way, they are.

A method with potential to be a billion-dollar business -- beginning with a streamlined storage of DNA of human body samples -- is being developed by the new Carlsbad company GenVault. Its process has attracted the interest of federal health officials.

From each body sample researchers can extract the genetic material that is a unique identifier and a map to the makeup of an individual human being. It's one of the keys to developing a drug. The same information can also be used to link someone to a crime.

For years, the storage method of choice for DNA has been deep freezers, which are space and energy hogs. Blood specimens have also been stored for years on Guthrie Cards or FTA paper, both chemically treated materials that preserve the genetic properties of cells for years.

But whether in freezers or on Guthrie Cards, retrieving these samples and preparing them to remove the DNA can be cumbersome and time consuming.

GenVault, a private startup company, is offering researchers another option: dry storage with an automated retrieval system.

It's a technique that has attracted the interest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is testing GenVault's technology for use in an annual national health survey.

"Think of these biological samples as a steak," said Michael Hogan, GenVault's chief science officer. "You can freeze a steak or turn it into jerky. They both might not be something you'd want to put on the grill, but they're still steak. That's what we are doing, but in a more skillful way."

GenVault, started with $10 million in venture capital from Domain Associates, is using the older science of Guthrie Cards, mixing it with a little modern chemistry and cutting-edge robotics. The result is a reduced-size, increased-speed storage and retrieval system that the company's founders

say can protect the integrity of biological samples for more than a decade.

The company's proprietary robotics system drops a small amount of the biological sample, such as blood, into one of 384 tiny wells in a hand-size plastic plate. The DNA in the sample is absorbed by FTA paper, a patented chemically treated paper lining the bottom of the well.

The paper deactivates other biological properties of the sample, including any that would be considered biohazards, said Mitch Eggers, GenVault's chief executive.

Also inserted into each well is a bar code, which will later serve as a way to double-check the identity of the sample.

The plates are stacked eight high in storage trays and placed into what look like two-story-high file cabinets. The file cabinets and robotics system are themselves stored in a climate-controlled vault the size of a two-car garage.

DNA samples from 500,000 people can be stored in a vault of that size. By comparison, more than 50,000 square feet of freezer space would be needed to store the same information. In its mostly empty 65,000 square feet of office space, once home to Lucent, GenVault has plenty of room to build dozens of vaults as needed.

A computer keeps track of where each particular sample is stored, by well location, tray and storage shelf.

If someone storing 10,000 samples decided they wanted to test a specific 100, that request would be typed into a computer, Eggers said. The computer would locate the samples, and the robotics system would collect the trays, punch out the needed wells and return the rest of the trays to storage.

To reconstitute the sample, the paper in the wells is treated with a liquid buffer and -- voila! -- DNA and bar code, Eggers said.

The DNA extraction process has piqued the interest of the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, said Geraldine M. McQuillan, the epidemiologist at the helm of the government study that tells the nation how obese it is and how high its cholesterol levels are.

"Our processing method is very labor intensive," said McQuillan. "For us, this is more work up front. But once it's done, it's fairly easy to use a specimen for research," she said. "It might aid us in the whole bottleneck of processing."

GenVault's process has been successfully beta tested for the survey, and within the next few months the agency will run several hundred samples through the company to answer the questions: Does the technology fit? Do the researchers like it? Can enough DNA be stored in the wells?

If successful with the pilot program, GenVault expects to process and store more than 10,000 samples a year for the agency, Eggers said.

"Technology has improved to the point that you can process a large number of samples in a short period of time," Hogan said. "The problem is locating the samples and preparing them for testing."

He said the GenVault system overcomes time-delay problems with DNA samples. Hogan said "they would sit in a box on the receiving dock so long before they could be retrieved and processed that they would no longer be any good."

Currently GenVault's system processes and stores DNA samples. But by changing the chemical treatment in the wells, the company plans to expand to offering protein storage early next year and microbial storage by late 2004, Hogan said.

The potential market for this storage -- whether it is in GenVault's warehouse or in a self-contained system the company is offering to build at other locations -- is in the "low billions of dollars" and could include hospitals, government labs, forensic specialists and drug researchers, Eggers said.

He also sees growth in the market potential as drug discovery companies increasingly seek to store samples from clinical trials for further study once a drug reaches the market.

Once the company has amassed numerous clients and thousands of samples, he said, the company can seek further opportunities as a biological library. It would become a partner with companies that are willing to sell pieces of their biological collection to other researchers.

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