MOUNTAIN VIEW -- In less than a decade, biotech company 23andMe has turned a refrigerator full of spit into one of the largest databases of personal genetics information in the world. <\/p>\n
The brainchild of Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe began in 2006 as a startup mailing DNA testing kits to customers' front doors and asking them to mail back a vial of saliva. Eight years later, the company is the gatekeeper of a database of hundreds of thousands of people's DNA -- a self-described Google for genetics information. <\/p>\n
\"It's actually bigger than anything else I can think of, way bigger,\" said Lisa Brooks, program director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. <\/p>\n
23andMe has begun selling that genetics data to researchers and pharmaceutical companies to conduct large-scale medical studies, making it an emerging leader in a largely underexplored, and at times hotly debated, area of scientific research. In the last couple of months, 23andMe has announced a joint effort with Pfizer to research inflammatory bowel disease, released findings from a joint study of more than 100,000 people that made new discoveries on Parkinson's disease, and received a $1.4 million grant from the NIH. <\/p>\n
But as the guardian of a very lucrative set of data -- the accuracy of which has come under question -- critics say the Mountain View company also may pose a threat to consumers' privacy. <\/p>\n
Most medical studies take months or years to solicit enough volunteers. But 23andMe puts the genetic information of 700,000 people at researchers' fingertips, allowing medical studies to be fast-tracked and new treatments to make their way into hospitals sooner, experts say, giving patients with chronic diseases a better quality of life. <\/p>\n
\"Instead of actually having to do clinical trials the old-fashioned way, we can enable researchers to get their answers instantaneously,\" Wojcicki said in an interview with this newspaper. \"And they pay us for that.\" <\/p>\n
But some experts worry 23andMe users have no idea where their own genetic information will end up. Because the company is relying on data sales to become profitable -- selling $99 home genetic testing kits doesn't pull in the big-dollar revenue -- 23andMe may disseminate consumers' genetic information not only to government agencies and research institutions, say legal and bioethics experts, but also to big pharmaceutical companies, marketers and advertisers. <\/p>\n
\"There are a lot of people who would want to use that data. There's a lot of money potentially locked up in that data,\" said Charles Seife, a professor at New York University and longtime science writer. <\/p>\n
Indeed, in a 2013 interview with The New York Times, Wojcicki said, \"I remember in the early days of Google, Larry (Page) would say, 'I just want the world's data on my laptop.' I feel the same way about health care. I want the world's data accessible.\" <\/p>\n
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23andMe aims to be Google for genetic research<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MOUNTAIN VIEW -- In less than a decade, biotech company 23andMe has turned a refrigerator full of spit into one of the largest databases of personal genetics information in the world. The brainchild of Anne Wojcicki, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe began in 2006 as a startup mailing DNA testing kits to customers' front doors and asking them to mail back a vial of saliva. Continue reading