Money in Genetic Diseases

Nature announced earlier this week on the bankruptcy of Iceland's deCODE, a pioneer in monetizing genomics and self-described "global leader in analyzing and understanding the human genome."

They made waves back in the day for having exclusive access to the icelandic population. Basically, that's significant because you can obtain detailed information on many many individuals of a recently shared common ancestry, and an island (read isolated) population to boot.

Indeed, many (102) publications were amassed, but no drugs were marketed:

But the business of turning genetic discoveries into cash has long been difficult, and many such firms have converted themselves into drug-discovery operations. Unfortunately for deCODE, it could not develop drugs quickly enough to satisfy investors.

And while the argument is made that the case of deCODE is not systemic, the article alse reports that "This year the personal-genomics company 23andMe, based in Mountain View, California, announced two rounds of lay-offs, lost one of its two co-founders and announced a series of product and price restructurings."

23andMe, famously co-founded by the wife of Google co-counder Sergey Brin, basically surveys your genome for common disease-associate variants. Their latest offering is to map your ancestery:

Relative Finder is a breakthrough feature that uses autosomal DNA to help you find relatives from all parts of your family tree. With Relative Finder, you can grow your family tree like never before, and discover relatives you never knew you had.

Which I imagine means they measure how many genetic variants you have in common  with all the other people in their growing database and maybe throw in some statistical tests and then tell you that you're related, distantly, to so-and-so. I'm still at a loss as to the exact purpose of it, aside from entertainment - which could very well be enough of an incentive for a real business model.

Sequence on!