BIOTECHNOLOGY:
Pharma Giant Creates Genomics Institute
Elizabeth Pennisi
On 8 April, Novartis Pharma of Basel, Switzerland, announced that it is committing $250 million to create its own research institute, the Novartis Institute for Functional Genomics, to be based in La Jolla, California. The institute, which should be up and running in 2 years and will be home to some 100 researchers, will combine under one roof the various kinds of expertise it takes to perform studies of gene function on a large scale.