Big Pharma Wants Your DNA (But What Will They Do With It?)

It's never been a secret that the consumer DNA labs like23andMe have always intended to sell their anonymized data to other parties such as pharmaceutical companies (see: Helix Makes DNA Sequencing Available to Consumers;Where Do We Go From Here?,23andMe Customers: Suckers or Empowered Consumers?).This has always been the rationale for offering DNA testing to consumers at very low prices. After a few years, the details of such deals are beginning to emerge. A recent article spelled out some of them (see:Big Pharma Would Like Your DNA). Below is an excerpt from it:...[T]his week ’s announcement that GlaxoSmithKline is investing $300 million in 23andMe and using the DNA company’s de-identified, aggregate customer data for drug research is very much in keeping with the long-term business plan. You don ’t make that kind of money selling $99 spit kits. 23andMe customers can opt of out their data being used in research, but the vast majority of its 5 million customers have opted in. The deal comes at a time as pharmaceutical companies are increasingly looking to DNA for new drug ideas. In 2015, 23andMe announced its first partnership with a pharmaceutical company —in which it would study Parkinson’s withGenentech.... Elsewhere in the world, the Icelandic biopharmaceutical company deCODE has sequenced over half of Iceland ’s adult population to identify genes associated with diseases. deCODE wasacquired by Amgen and then the Chinese pharmaceutical company WuXi ...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Electronic Health Record (EHR) Genomic Testing Healthcare Innovations Lab Industry Trends Medical Consumerism Medical Research Pharmaceutical Industry Source Type: blogs