Estonia Sees its Future in Genes

TARTU -- The gooey strip of DNA was visible underneath the halogen glow as Dagni Krinka tilted the tube of liquid back and forth under the light at a lab in this northernmost Baltic country.

''This is the part of the work I like best,'' Krinka, the head of the laboratory assigned the daunting task of collecting genetic samples from hundreds of thousands of Estonians in the coming years, told DW-WORLD. Then, gazing at the strip, she asked, ''Isn't it beautiful?''

It could be much more than beautiful. If this nation of 1.4 million succeeds in its ambitious goal to build one of the world's largest DNA databases, the stringy white gobs in Dagni's test tubes could push international drug development to a new level and bring international recognition to a country still playing catch up after decades of Soviet rule.

Databases that will attract pill-makers

Two years after American scientists mapped the human genome, the chemical building blocks that make up humanity's genetic heritage, Estonia is caught up in the race to build large DNA storage banks. In Iceland, the biotechnology company, Decode, has been mining genetic data from 80,000 of that country's population since 1999 and has found gene variations linked to heart disease and osteoporosis. Projects are also underway in Canada, the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

The goal of these various endeavors is to give scientists and pharmaceutical companies a big population of genetic material that they can scour for disease-causing genes, and use to test out the effectiveness of the medication we take when we get sick.

''It's a resource for basic science,'' said Andres Metspalu, a biotechnology professor at the University of Tartu in Estonia who began the Estonian Genome Project in 1999. ''But with good basic research, it can also lead to good economic benefits.''

Developing pills for Europeans, Americans

Money, scientific progress and international recognition are the three factors driving Estonia's plan forward. Since blood sampling began in October 2002, the nonprofit Estonian Genome Project Foundation has collected DNA from more than 3,000 Estonians. Aided by just $4.5 million in private investment, the project hopes to have 10,000 samples by the end of the year. Over the next six years, Estonian officials say, the number should be well into the hundreds of thousands at a cost of more than $100 million.

The project's broad government and public support as well as health records good enough to create vital geneological maps make it attractive to researchers and companies looking for a reliable, accurate database. Adding to the attraction for potential drug developers, Estonia has an especially diverse genetic makeup as a result of hundreds of years of occupation by Russians, Swedes, Danes and Germans.

''You want your results to have wide applicability,'' said Cornelius Diamond, the chief executive officer of a San Diego-based biotech company, Prediction Sciences.

Just who will access the data, and how well will the database be protected? Ethical concerns remain.

Survival depends on quick results

Diamond's small firm already has signed on to the genome project and recently completed testing two antidepressants on a couple of hundred willing Estonians. By comparing the effectiveness of the pills to the genetic material of the donors, the company hopes to find out why the medication works for one person but not the other.

''We're basically predicting a person's response to the drug,'' Diamond said.

If Estonia's project is to survive, it needs many more Diamonds, Estonian Genome Project officials acknowledged. The company charged with finding them is Egeen, an Estonian-led start-up in the San Francisco Bay Area that holds the commercial rights to the database.

Kalev Kask, Egeen's CEO and a native Estonian, cut his teeth in the turbulent Silicon Valley biotech industry. He acknowledged the less-than-ideal investment climate currently for biotech ventures, but said the clinical drug trials underway in Estonia are exactly the type of thing that will attract pharmaceutial companies.

''The climate is such that you better come up with something that has short-term economic return,'' he said.

In addition to money concerns, the project has yielded its fair share of ethical questions as well. After decades under what they call the ''Soviet occupation,'' some Estonians are wary of the Orwellian request to put their most personal information in the hands of a few people.

Privacy and ethical concerns remain

''The project goes to your very basic being, an area that is very private,'' said Tiit Veeber, 54, a Tartu businessman. ''These couple of people control the data. . . . What will they do with that data? And do they have a right to sell it?''

To stem these concerns, the Estonian government passed a law in 2000 that requires gene donors to sign a contract giving their consent. Anyone caught misusing gene donor information faces criminal prosecution. The law also ensures gene donor information and their blood samples are separated and forbids companies or researchers from taking the information out of the country, ensuring that the data doesn't fall into the wrong hands.

As to whether Egeen has a right to make money off of someone's genetic material, Metspalu said the project's altruistic motives far outweigh any financial ones.

''It's our turn to put something into this collective pool of knowledge,'' he said. If people make money off of it, ''then so be it: This is putting Estonia on the map.''