I hate to be negative about a startup that way, but it's important to realize that "direct-to-consumer genomics" is a scam. I went to a presentation by a founder of one the competitors (there are 3-4 high-flying competitors in the business), and I had the highest expectations. But then throughout the presentation I couldn't quite figure out what the company actually does. So I asked. And the answer is marketing and litigation.<p>* these companies don't do any research<p>* they don't even own sequencing equipment<p>* all they do is send a sample of your spit to the lab, and send you a pretty writeup<p>* consider why is there no "direct-to-consumer blood tests" even though that information is far more actionable<p>I wouldn't even have a problem with this if it was a proper scam, like XanGo MLM, a nice nutritional supplement scheme, make-money-fast setup, etc. With these you know upfront what you are getting into. But these guys look so clean, and go out of their way to skate the narrow line next to the true medical advice. Needless to say the legal budgets must be non-trivial.<p>I ran this by my cousin who is in nursing school. And she goes "Oh yuh, they are teaching us how to talk to people about all the nonsense results people [in increasing numbers] will get through these outfits."<p>Some more reading: <a href="http://microarray.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/deadline-today-for-personal-genomics-companies/" rel="nofollow">http://microarray.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/deadline-today-fo...</a>
Great news =)<p>Good but here are things that will help me bite:<p>- $299-199<p>- a better database for people with Asian heritage. I could be wrong but I think no company in the West has this yet - well a company in Greenland is working on a partnership with a Hong Kong company<p>- something like HIPAA or some privacy clause. I don't want my insurance companies to know I'm genetically prone to X<p>- I'm not keen on someone trying to patent my genes either (don't know if you guys will or not though)
Still a little expensive, but downright fascinating. Someone has put a heck of a lot of time into this.<p>It looks like they give you your own raw genomics data! Fun fun fun!
The problem with SNP-based association is that, for the vast majority of disease-associated SNPs, the relative risk is only increased on the order of a few percent at most. When it comes to predicting the risk of an individual (as opposed to a population) developing a particular disease this is virtually meaningless. No doubt the current technology will appeal to some out of curiosity. However I do think that the vast quantities of sequence that will be generated by next generation platforms over the next few years will lead to the ability to usefully predict disease susceptibility of an individual basis.