Monday, November 26, 2007

A start-up partly funded by Google will let people search for information about their personal genet

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Start-up enables users to examine their own DNA
GOOGLE-BACKED FIRM INCLUDES MEDICAL DATA
By Elise Ackerman
Mercury News
Article Launched: 11/20/2007 01:35:02 AM PST

A start-up partly funded by Google will let people search for information about their personal genetic makeup, such as whether they are predisposed to have a good memory or heart disease.

23andMe, which began offering its service to the public Monday, is one of a handful of new companies seeking to unlock the secrets of the genome for ordinary people with deeply personal concerns: Am I susceptible to breast cancer? Could I develop diabetes?

But the new services, including ones soon to be offered by Navigenics of Redwood Shores and deCode Genetics of Iceland, are raising a host of knotty questions, as scientists and genetic experts caution that the data can be both difficult to interpret and susceptible to misuse.

The co-founders of 23andMe, Linda Avey, a veteran of the biopharmaceutical industry, and Anne Wojcicki, a health care investor who is married to Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, said they think this information should be accessible and have worked hard to provide it in a responsible way.

The 23andMe service uses tools made by Illumina, of San Diego, to analyze an individual's DNA for nearly 600,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms, known as SNPs, which are the millions of small variations sprinkled over a person's 23 pairs of chromosomes. The company is named after those chromosomal pairs. Scientists have linked the variations to diseases and human traits like memory.

23andMe uploads the analysis to an online database where

customers can explore the degree to which the information in their genes has been linked by scientists to particular diseases, traits and characteristics. The service, which costs $999, includes an "odds calculator" that combines the genetic information with customers' ages and ethnicities to give an idea of the common health risks they could face.
Hank Greely, a law professor at Stanford University who has been exploring the implications of the new services, said while companies like 23andMe have good intentions, they could easily end up leading their customers astray.

"A lot of the genetic results are early, weak and preliminary," Greely said. "One worries that people will think the information is more powerful than it actually is and change their lives based on it."

For example, he said, a woman could learn that her genetic association with breast cancer is normal or low and stop getting mammograms.

There are also privacy concerns. Once a person's DNA analysis is put into a database, it is at risk of loss or theft.

Avey and Wojcicki said they are protecting the data with stringent security measures, and that they plan to conduct regular audits.

Wojcicki also said the company is vetting the information it provides to customers according to a set of standards developed in consultation with expert advisers. Both Wojcicki and Avey are sensitive to the fact that genetic studies have been known to make a big media splash - only to be quietly retracted later. "We are erring on the side of caution," Wojcicki said.

Ultimately, Wojcicki and Avey are hoping that customers themselves will agree to participate in large-scale studies that could ultimately benefit humanity as a whole. They said important research has progressed slowly because of the difficulty in amassing enough genetic data. Right now, 23andMe has about 200 DNA profiles in its database.

23andMe encourages customers to share information by providing tools that let people compare themselves to brothers, sisters and even, potentially, distant relatives and strangers.

The company plans to unveil a social-networking component in the future.

Other social networks based on genetic similarities have already launched, such as GeneTree.com of Salt Lake City, but none includes medically relative information.

Scott Woodward, executive director of the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation, which put together the database behind GeneTree, said the Genetree team decided not to collect medical information because of the risks it created for donors. "We felt like it would detract from our mission of helping people reconnect," Woodward said.

The foundation currently has one of the largest private DNA databases with more than 100,000 samples from around the world.

GeneTree is a free social-networking site that uses both genetic information and genealogy to trace users' ancestry back through the centuries and also lets people connect with long-lost relatives.


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