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TWST: Will you (Nasdaq:GNSC) be doing a good deal of partnership and alliances?

Dr. Ruaño: We already have a partnership with Janssen Research Foundation (JRF) a member of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies that involves a partnership to license our technology and apply it to pharmaceutical products in the portfolio of JRF and R.W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute (PRI), also a member of the Johnson & Johnson family of companies.

TWST: What is your product’s market potential?

Dr. Ruaño: Eventually, we aim to create the new operating system for medicine, and therefore, if you consider what the budgets are for pharmaceutical development and marketing, we are talking about 50 billion in the US alone. Certainly, we can tackle a very substantial share of that. If you have 10% share, that gives you a 5 billion market already.

TWST: What sort of technical developments do you expect in the next couple of years?

Dr. Ruaño: We have expanded the roster of genes that we have measured for variations. We will continue to do more genes as the company ramps up its operations, but as it is, we already have a sufficient catalog and the informatics tools to process them. Frankly, the only regulatory limiting step at the present time is the number of clinical programs we can perform. I told you about four major programs that are in the pipeline for year 2001.

TWST: Are there any dangers or difficulties?

Dr. Ruaño: The rate-limiting step as we develop the technology is going to be the extent to which society accepts the technology as it is implemented into medical practice. Now that we already have our first pharmaceutical partnership in place with Janssen Research Foundation, we believe that the pharmaceutical industry is embracing this. The next question as we move the technology to the market is how do we interface with society in such a way that it is accepted as a way to improve therapy? Therefore, the frontier is society, the Legislature, the FDA and other forums where we can interface with real people that are seeking better healthcare based on their DNA. I think our pharmaceutical partnership is a landmark event as we move this technology into health care sectors dealing with the management of disease and therapeutic interventions for better medicine. Another landmark event, that we expect to move forward, is interfacing this with diagnostics and eventually with information technology. One step at a time, but all of this is falling into place.

TWST: Are there any landmarks or milestones you feel that investors should be looking at to judge your progress over the next two or three years?

Dr. Ruaño: Certainly, expanding on our list of partners. As it is, we have exceeded expectations in terms of delivering the first partnership ahead of schedule. We have promised another such partnership in the year 2001. I think our milestones are carefully delineated to convey value to the shareholders and to, as I said, underscore this process where you go from one step of commercialization to the next one of commercialization, and the whole story starts to piece together in a seamless way.