Genetic analyzer plans IPO
Helicos, which aims to speed sequencing, hopes to raise $100m
Helicos BioSciences Corp. of Cambridge, a 71-person firm trying to develop a faster way to analyze genes, is planning to go public in a $100 million stock offering.
The Kendall Square company is the latest entry in the race to build a faster and cheaper genetic sequencer, a machine that can read the letters that compose the genetic code.
Once the domain of long-term biology research projects, gene sequencing has sped up in recent years and is becoming a key tool for studying diseases.
If it becomes significantly faster and less expensive, it could eventually become a central component of healthcare. The popular vision of "personalized medicine" turns on the idea that medical treatment could be custom-tailored to each person's genetic signature.
Though genetic sequencing is speedier than it was in the 1990s when the Human Genome Project took years to assemble the first full human genome, the process is still cumbersome and expensive.
Top-of-the line gene sequencers require the cloning of numerous copies of DNA. A fast machine, such as the sequencer made by 454 Life Sciences in Branford, Conn., can cost $500,000 and take months to read a full human genome.
Using a new gene-reading system invented at the California Institute of Technology, and supported by $67 million in financing from mostly Boston-area venture capitalists, Helicos aims to reduce that to a matter of days. Rather than cloning DNA to produce numerous copies, its machine reads a single strand by using lasers, a camera, and tiny fluorescent tags.
Company officials could not be reached yesterday, but chief executive Stanley Lapidus has said he aims to sequence a human genome in three days at a cost of just $5,000. The company plans to introduce its system, called the HeliScope , by year-end.
Lapidus also founded Cytyc Corp. , a $3 billion Marlborough company that makes the country's most widely used cervical-cancer screening test.
Helicos is the latest in a raft of local life-science companies to decide to go public. On Thursday, Cambridge's Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. filed for a $60 million public offering, and both Synta Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Molecular Insight Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge went public in February.
Stephen F. Heuser can be reached at sheuser@globe.com. 
