August 9, 2006 – Genentech bought an exclusive license for a GeneMap of Crohn’s disease from a small Canadian company called Genizon. The news is remarkable in two respects: Genizon is a small company to have pulled off this kind of feat, and family/association studies have had only limited success finding genetic mutations underlying complex diseases (a complex disease is one caused by multiple genes at multiple loci, rather than a single gene at a single spot). We look at the history of these studies and the implications of this deal...
