Personalized Genetic Information: Making Money with Our Genome
When the human genome project was finally completed at the beginning of the millennium, there was a lot of speculation about the business prospects that all these DNA information can have. However, nobody came up with anything concrete at that time. Six years later, a couple of biotech companies in the US seem to finally have found a way of making money with what we know about the human genome [1].
The nobel prize laureat James Watson made headlines earlier this year when he became the first human being to have his genome sequenced. However, sequencing a whole genome is a tedious and expensive endeavor that is unlikely to go mainstream.
The key is to focus on variations in short DNA sequences (both nuclear and mitochondrial) called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs which can give a lot of information ranging from an individual’s predisposition to certain diseases to inherited traits and ancestry.
Business will probably proceed in two directions: medicine and genealogy.
The use of personalized SNPs to assess the risk factors for certain diseases will definitely be a good selling point. Additional services on genetic counseling will also bring in big bucks. This is the direction that the company Navigenics seems to be following.
On the other hand, the curiosity of knowing one’s ancestry cannot be underestimated. Another start-up 23andMe, offers “to connect you to the 23 paired volumes of your own genetic blueprint” thus gaining insight into your “ancestry, genealogy, and inherited traits.” [2]
It is expected that more and more entrepreneurs will follow these companies’ examples and come up with new ways to make money out of DNA information. However, it is not clear what regulations would apply to these types of genomic products.
Photo credit: US National Library of Medicine
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