Exelixis Publishes World's Most Comprehensive Collection of Functional Gene Knockouts in a Multicellular Organism

24-Feb-2004

South San Francisco. Scientists at Exelixis, Inc. published two landmark articles describing the most complete functional genetic toolkit for studying a multicellular organism. The Exelixis collection includes specific disruptions in a majority of genes in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. This toolkit is one example of how Exelixis has been able to industrialize the use of model system genetics to identify modifiers of important disease pathways. Both papers were published today in the online edition of the March 2004 issue of Nature Genetics (www.nature.com/genetics) and will be the cover story in the subsequent print edition.

The collection of fly strains, much of which Exelixis will also make available to not-for-profit institutions, will allow researchers to rapidly create a loss-of-function mutation in virtually any gene within the Drosophila genome. Exelixis' ability to rapidly generate and characterize large numbers of mutations in Drosophila, C. elegans, yeast, mice and zebrafish, among other species, has formed the basis for the company's gene discovery and validation platform. Coupled with Exelixis' powerful drug discovery and development capabilities, these technologies have enabled the company to develop into a leading, integrated biotechnology company. Exelixis has utilized the Drosophila collection extensively over the past several years in its work on cancer, inflammation, and metabolic and neurodegenerative disorders. The company believes that by making a large part of the Drosophila collection available to not-for-profit institutions, it will achieve three goals: first, the collection will facilitate and accelerate academic research around the world; second, Exelixis has retained sole commercial rights and believes that it is well positioned to exploit the commercial potential of the collection; and finally, Exelixis' biology platform now is extremely broad, so that it is likely that more benefit will accrue to Exelixis' stockholders through the wider access to the collection.

"This is a classic example of doing well by doing good," said George A. Scangos, Ph.D., president and chief executive officer, Exelixis, Inc. "The data and methods reported in Nature Genetics represent a fraction of our biological expertise and demonstrate the considerable depth and power of the systems that we have built over the past few years. Over the last several years, our research platform has expanded and been enriched through the integrated utilization of multiple model systems for target validation and drug discovery. While specific Drosophila lines remain important tools that we use in our drug research today, we believe that the broad collection should now be made available to others who can further mine its resources. We believe that granting access rights to our functional Drosophila library and enabling academic researchers to use this resource is consistent with Exelixis' long-term business strategy and will have dual benefits. We believe that society will benefit through the furtherance of disease research worldwide and that Exelixis will benefit from gaining access to information that may have potential commercial value."

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