(Adds details from interview, background)

By Bill Berkrot and Ransdell Pierson

NEW YORK, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Celera Group <CRA.N> aims to begin marketing a diagnostic test early next year for a previously unknown major heart risk that could shake up the coronary field and quickly become one of its biggest products, the company said on Wednesday.

The heart risk is a gene variation that Celera has determined is present in more than half the general population and puts them at very high risk of heart attack and other cardiovascular complications, Celera President Kathy Ordonez said in an interview.

But that higher risk can effectively be eliminated by taking a leading class of current heart medicines, potentially making the Celera test a diagnostic game changer in heart disease management, she said.

"It could be a home run," that could considerably ramp up company sales, said Ordonez, whose company is best known for having sequenced the human genome.

Precise details about the gene variation and the therapies that address the risk are expected to appear in medical journal articles in coming months, said Ordonez, who joined Celera after helping lead the diagnostics division at rival Roche Holding AG <ROG.VX>.

Currently, a high level of "bad" LDL cholesterol is the main signal for increased heart risk and the need to take heart-protective medicines.

The new risk factor that Celera will soon identify could become a major, and potentially standard, new target for medical screening and influence how doctors prescribe heart medicines, Ordonez said.

"To me, the most important thing is that it doesn't only tell you that you have the risk but what to do with the risk," she said.

The new risk factor is completely independent of others for heart disease, such as obesity, diabetes and smoking, and would otherwise go undetected using current standard screening.

She said the price of the test, which a patient would only need to do once, would likely be about $100 to $200. The test would be performed by Berkeley Heartlab, a privately held company that Celera earlier this month agreed to acquire for $195 million, Ordonez said. That deal is expected to close during the company's second fiscal quarter.

She predicted insurers will become convinced of the need for the test because of its potential to protect patients and save money by identifying an easily treatable risk factor.

Celera has annual revenue of about $60 million to $65 million, including sales of diagnostics it sells in partnership with Abbott Laboratories Inc <ABT.N> for diseases such as hepatitis, HIV and cystic fibrosis.

The company, which abandoned earlier efforts to develop drugs in favor of a focus on diagnostics, expects to achieve profitability by the end of its current fiscal year in June.

Berkeley Heartlab has annual sales of about $85 million and Celera expects that acquisition to bolster earnings by the second half of fiscal 2008.

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