Hyseq, Inc.

Hyseq, Inc. — company profile

Hyseq, Inc. (also styled Hyseq Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) was a biotechnology company headquartered at 670 Almanor Avenue, Sunnyvale, California. It was founded in 1992 (per the Nuvelo corporate history; some contemporaneous press accounts give 1994) and went public in 1997 on Nasdaq under the ticker HYSQ. It was a public operating company, not a shell or patent-assertion vehicle. As of November 15, 2002, Hyseq reported roughly 155 full-time-equivalent employees, and it recorded about $26.4 million in contract revenues for 2002.

Operations. Hyseq was built on sequencing-by-hybridization (SBH) and high-density DNA array technology for gene discovery. Its platform included the HyChip sequencing chip, the HyGenomics gene-sequence database, and related bioinformatics and high-throughput screening tools; it also pursued gene-based therapeutics and diagnostics and licensed technology to partners. A majority-owned subsidiary, Callida Genomics, was created with Applied Biosystems to advance sequencing technology. Major revenue came from a plant-gene sequencing collaboration with American Cyanamid/BASF Plant Science and from license arrangements. In 2001–2002 Hyseq shifted toward drug development, in-licensing alfimeprase (a fibrinolytic) from Amgen.

Patent-litigation posture. In the tracked case data, Hyseq appears once, as a defendant: Affymetrix, Inc. v. Hyseq, Inc., filed August 18, 1998 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (0 plaintiff cases, 1 defendant case). External coverage indicates the dispute was two-way: Hyseq had itself asserted SBH patents (U.S. 5,202,231; 5,525,464; 5,695,940) against Affymetrix in 1997 suits, while Affymetrix asserted DNA-array patents (including the ’934, ’305 and ’992 patents) against Hyseq, Synteni and Incyte. The N.D. Cal. court issued a consolidated claim-construction ruling, Affymetrix, Inc. v. Hyseq, Inc., 132 F. Supp. 2d 1212 (2001). The parties settled in October 2001, with Affymetrix making a $4 million license payment and the Callida Genomics subsidiary being formed.

Later context. Hyseq merged with Variagenics, Inc. in January 2003 and renamed itself Nuvelo, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUVO). Nuvelo was acquired by ARCA Biopharma in a reverse merger completed January 27, 2009; the entity's lineage continues under the ARCA/Oruka Therapeutics name.