May 23, 2007
from deCode to decentralization: Genetics is about to get personal
A new Silicon Valley company, 23andMe, closed its Series A Preferred Stock financing yesterday (May 22), and so opened a mode of organizing genomics research that seems new, to me, in at least two ways.
The founders of 23andMe are trying a new approach to financing genomics research using high-density genome-wide scanning technologies. It is not clear from initial public documents what the founders envision as the future sources of 23andMe’s income stream, but a couple of candidates are pharmaceuticals firms and user-subscribers. Beyond VC, their approach seems to be more mom-and-pop retail than Godzilla grant or government contract. This decentralized mode of funding research dovetails with a decentralized mode of gathering genetic information.
23andMe proposes to enable clients to collect information about their own DNA for applications a non-scientist can understand. They could be as simple as genealogical research, or as complicated as identifying one’s own potential future diseases to work with pharmaceuticals companies proactively on diagnosis and treatment. 23andMe will manage the personal genetic information using new proprietary web-based software tools. At the same time, it seems, 23andME will seek permission from its users to compile mass data sets of genetic information for use in “basic science” genomics research.
The above conclusions are sketchy. The 23andMe website is short on details, seemingly oriented to ordinary consumers and not hard scientists. (And if it weren’t, I wouldn’t have the expertise to decypher it anyway.) See for yourself: http://www.23andme.com/ .
23andMe is scheduled to launch later this year. It seems worth tracking, as a decentralized mode of knowledge production and capital accumulation in human genomics. As they say, Don’t panic, we’re here to help.