Applied Science: Brazil has its AIDS epidemic nearly cornered. Genetic sleuthing could help seal the deal. (Genetics).

Yet more evidence Brazil rides the cutting edge of emerging genetic technologies: The National Ministry of Health will conduct the country's first large-scale study to evaluate the clinical utility of routine genotyping in Brazil's battle against AIDS.

If the trial succeeds, Brazil will have one more weapon to fight the disease that has killed 100,000 Brazilians in the last two decades. And, a whole new market will fall into the lap of Applied Biosystems, sister company of controversial U.S. biotech firm Celera Genomics.

Brazil's Health Ministry paid US$147 each for 6,000 Applied Biosystems kits that researchers will use to examine drug resistance of the HIV-1 virus genome. Although therapies have improved, it's common for treatments to fail because the virus becomes resistant to drugs.

The year-long study, launched in September, calls for 6,000 tests on samples drawn from 120,000 HIV-positive patients treated annually in Brazil. To be eligible for the study, the patients must have failed once to respond to anti-retroviral drug combination therapy. Currently, Brazil has an estimated 530,000 infected people, four-fifths of whom do not know that they are infected.

Brazil is well ahead, however, of other countries in treating AIDS. Since 1997, every infected patient gets a triple cocktail of drugs at no cost. As a result, the death rate from the disease has plunged, averting hundreds of thousands of new hospitalizations. The key to Brazil's success was the government's decision to copy brand-name drugs at a 79% lower cost.

Candida Dantas, a technician with the National AIDS Commission at Brazil's Health Ministry, predicts the genetic study will help save millions of dollars now spent on inadequate medication. "There is a big probability that we will continue buying the genotyping kits to improve patients' treatment," Dantas says. "This will be our biggest gain."

The kits have been sold elsewhere, but Brazil is a special case, AIDS experts say. Eric Shulse, Applied Biosystems' director of molecular diagnostics, believes Brazil could be faster in showing results because the country has a more extensive, better-financed treatment program. "The HIV genotyping kits are the application that appears to have the most promising prognostics," says Shulse.

Gene machine. Celera first made headlines in its dash to decode the human genome, a neck-and-neck race against U.S. government researchers that ended in a photo finish with a joint news conference on June 26,2000.

Once promised to fill the void for tech investors burned by the markets, genomics has so far been an interesting scientific pursuit short on financial results. Yet Celera might soon be able to turn its leading position in genomic data into cash, at the same time it makes a difference in the global struggle against AIDS.

Celera's original strategy was to sell subscriptions to its genomic database. Since then, the company has unleashed a storm of press releases announcing partnerships to develop new drugs based on its discoveries.

Yet lucrative drugs have been slow in coming. In fiscal year ending June 30, Celera reported that it doubled revenues, to $89 million. But research costs pushed the company to post a $186 million net loss. Excluding one-time charges, the company lost $73 million, Celera reported. Applied Biosystems, which makes money on medical equipment like genetic analyzers, fared better, posting a $212 million gain in fiscal 2001 on $1.6 billion in revenues.

Competing with U.S equipment maker Visible Genetics, California-based Applied won the bid to sell HIV kits, which arrived in August. Applied Biosystems is leasing genetic analyzers to labs to perform the test and will give training and support.

"This is a huge market," says Roberto Braga, senior director of Applied Biosystems' Brazilian branch in Sao Paulo. "If the tests prove successful, there will be very big demand for these kits."

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