WILMINGTON, Del.--Incyte Pharmaceuticals and Zeneca announced last week a collaboration in agricultural genomics that will extend the existing pharmaceutical collaboration between the two companies initiated in 1996 with agreements covering access to several Incyte database products.
Under the multiyear collaboration, Zeneca will have access to Incyte's PhytoSeq database. Incyte will apply its high-throughput gene sequencing and bioinformatics capabilities toward the generation of gene sequence and expression information for crop plants designated by Zeneca to be included in PhytoSeq which will contain sequence information from a range of agriculturally important crops, including wheat, maize, and rice.
In addition, Zeneca will have access to Incyte's microarray technology for the study of gene pathways and to monitor gene expression in plants. Incyte will provide Zeneca with data from both custom and pre-fabricated microarrays. The companies said this will provide an unprecedented level of information, allowing researchers at Zeneca to study multigenic pathways, or thousands of genes at a time, in a single experiment.