Perlegen Sciences
Mountain View, CA
Founded: 2001

Why we said: Part of the first wave of companies launched to meet personalized medicine needs, this Affymetrix spin-off was created to glean promising drug targets from human genome data as well as identify biomarkers to help physicians improve diagnostics. Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb had all signed on for longterm research collaborations and we expected the company to garner even more partnership deals.

What happened: In 2005, Pfizer invested $50 million in Perlegen, taking 12 percent ownership. The drugmaker promised another $25 million if the company went public in 2006. In April 2006, Perlegen became one of the first personalized medicine companies to announce an IPO, but the developer cancelled the $115 million offering the following month. The change of heart was prompted by disappointing results from studies of a diagnostics test designed to predict which type 2 diabetes patients would benefit from netoglitazone, a PPAR gamma agonists which can cause toxic edema.

Since then the company has focused on breast cancer diagnostics. Perlegen was granted an exclusive license to biomarkers it discovered in partnership with Cambridge University. In late September, Perlegen launched BREVAGen, a genetic test for breast cancer risk evaluation.

View the original Fierce 15 of 2003 report.

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