Manteia Predictive Medicine S.A. (initially incorporated under the name "GenInEx S.A.") was a start-up company created in November 2000 as a spin-off of Serono, a Swiss-based biotechnology company, now part of Merck-Serono, by private founders. [1] Its aim was to provide preventive and curative treatment guidelines for common and complex diseases. [2] These guidelines were envisaged as composed of two parts:
The company was basing its strategy on the development of so-called "DNA colony sequencing" technology (now commercialized by Illumina), its proprietary massive parallel sequencing [3] technology whose development had been initiated in late 1996 at Glaxo-Welcome's Geneva Biomedical Research Institute (GBRI), by Pascal Mayer [4] and Laurent Farinelli. This work has been protected by several patents and patents applications, [5] publications [6] [7] and was discussed in presentations at international conferences from 1998 to 2001. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
By the end of 2003, while the company was progressing along its plans towards realizing an industrial instrument capable of sequencing a complete human genome in approximately 24 hours, strategic considerations led the main shareholder ( Serono) to sell Manteia's colony DNA sequencing technology to UK based Solexa Ltd, now part of Illumina (company). [13] [14]
Manteia Predictive Medicine S.A. (initially incorporated under the name "GenInEx S.A.") was a start-up company created in November 2000 as a spin-off of Serono, a Swiss-based biotechnology company, now part of Merck-Serono, by private founders. [1] Its aim was to provide preventive and curative treatment guidelines for common and complex diseases. [2] These guidelines were envisaged as composed of two parts:
The company was basing its strategy on the development of so-called "DNA colony sequencing" technology (now commercialized by Illumina), its proprietary massive parallel sequencing [3] technology whose development had been initiated in late 1996 at Glaxo-Welcome's Geneva Biomedical Research Institute (GBRI), by Pascal Mayer [4] and Laurent Farinelli. This work has been protected by several patents and patents applications, [5] publications [6] [7] and was discussed in presentations at international conferences from 1998 to 2001. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
By the end of 2003, while the company was progressing along its plans towards realizing an industrial instrument capable of sequencing a complete human genome in approximately 24 hours, strategic considerations led the main shareholder ( Serono) to sell Manteia's colony DNA sequencing technology to UK based Solexa Ltd, now part of Illumina (company). [13] [14]