Venter Quits as President of Celera Genomics

J. Craig Venter, Ph.D., the scientist who sparked a fierce competition for deciphering the human genome, has resigned as president of Celera Genomics (Rockville, MD, USA), a company he helped to found. Dr. Venter will continue as chair of Celera's scientific advisory board, a part-time position, and will spend more time at the nonprofit organization he founded, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR).

In 1998 Celera was founded, and Dr. Venter announced it would decode the entire human genome in three years, long before the Human Genome Project, a publicly financed group that had already been working on the sequencing for almost ten years. The Human Genome Project accepted the challenge and spurred it efforts so that in June 2000, a tie was declared between the two groups as they reported a simultaneous completion. In the meantime, Celera has been shifting its focus toward pharmaceuticals, an area in which Dr. Venter has no experience. Celera's chairman, Tony L. White, will serve as president until an executive with pharmaceutical experience can be recruited to serve in that capacity.

"Our Board of Directors, Craig, and I all agreed that Celera's ongoing best interests would be served by making room for additional senior level management experienced in pharmaceutical discovery and development,” said White. "Meanwhile, Craig and we both look forward to his refocusing his attention more on purely scientific aspects of Celera's business.” Celera Genomics is an operating group of Applera Corp.




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