Hexagen To Become Part Of New Incyte Pharmacogenetics Unit

Incyte Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a provider of genomic technologies designed to aid in the understanding of the molecular basis of disease, has entered into an agreement to acquire Hexagen PLC. The Cambridge, England-based Company has developed a technology for the rapid discovery of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are believed to be important in determining an individual patient's susceptibility to disease or response to drugs.

Hexagen, which has a scientific staff of 45 employees, will maintain its facilities in Cambridge and become part of Incyte Genetics, a new pharmacogenetics business unit of Incyte. The company was founded in 1996 by Peter Goodfellow, Rudi Balling, Alan Schafer, Jamie Foster, Mark Bodmer and Andrew Sandham, based on technology developed at Peter Goodfellow's laboratory at Cambridge University

"Hexagen's powerful SNP discovery technology complements Incyte's existing sequence and bioinformatics technologies," said Roy A. Whitfield, chief executive officer of

Incyte. "The combination of Hexagen's SNP capabilities and Incyte's existing SNPs and sequence databases will enable us to accelerate detection of gene variations in thousands of DNA samples in a timeframe not previously possible. As a result, we believe this can help pharmaceutical companies to more quickly discover, develop, test and commercialize new drugs."

For more information: Denise Gilbert, chief financial officer, Incyte Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 3174 Porter Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94304, United States. Telephone: 650-845-4515. Fax: 650-855-0572. Or Mark Bodmer, CEO, Hexagen PLC, 214 Cambridge Science Park, Milton Road, Cambridge, CB4 4WA, UK. Telephone: 011-44-1223-424-877.