Celera, City of Hope Plan Breast Cancer Project

Celera Genomics, one of the companies racing to use information from gene-mapping to make profits, said it had hooked up with a cancer center to find genes associated with breast cancer. Celera, based in Rockville, Md., said it signed an agreement with the Duarte-based City of Hope Cancer Center to get clinical information from breast cancer patients and sequence their DNA. “We hope that this collaboration will enable clinical investigators to develop better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat breast cancer,” Dr. Sam Broder, chief medical officer of Celera and a former director of the National Cancer Institute, said in a statement. Celera will retain the rights to use all information generated from the collaboration. The intellectual property developed through the collaboration will be jointly owned by Celera and City of Hope. Specifically, City of Hope researchers will use Celera gene sequences to look at one of the key genes that encode the estrogen receptor, a part of cells linked with certain kinds of breast cancer. Celera Genomics shares fell $29 to close at $101 on the New York Stock Exchange.