DISQUS

VentureBeat: 23andMe: Will the personal-genomics company need Big Pharma to make money?

  • Mr. Gunn · 2 years ago
    Well, Google likes anything that generates massive amounts of data, that much we know.

    The first thing I thought of was that this would enable pharma to market those orphan drugs they've all got waiting in the wings, because people would know if they were in the group of responders.
  • piotr · 2 years ago
    This is the most insightful coverage of 23andMe I have seen. I might only add that the aggregate data they will sell to drug companies is much better than the data sold to consumer. According to the info on their site, the reproducibility of the Illumina chip is 99.9%, and of the custom chip 99.6%. Thus, in any single run, 550 + 120 SNPs are expected to be wrong. Since at the moment we are looking only at a handful of markers, it is not impossible to imagine an extremely unlucky consumer who gets ALL his disease-related SNPs messed up! On the other hand, once you start pooling thousands of customers and apply appropriate statistics, the data becomes rock solid.

    I am very excited about the possibilites offered by personal genomics, but this post reminded me of the argument Michael Crichton makes in his book "Next" for rescinding the Bayh-Dole Act: Currently, taxpayers finance research at the universities, and than pay top dollar for a drug they help finance. And the flood of life-saving therapies never happened.
  • Bud · 2 years ago
    Well thought out arguement. One thing I liked about DeCodeMe's offer/service is that they let you download a copy of your genome scan. I didn't see that capability on 23AndMe's site. ALSO, I wonder if either company will let you deleate your account and your genome scan from their system? Otherwise, it does seem like a bit of a scam. You pay them 1K to scan your genome (granted, they give you some good info in return) and then they make the big money by selling it back to Pharmaceutical companies...