Consumer biomarker-testing kits (like 23andme, and the equivalents for whole-genome sequencing, proteomics, microbiome, etc) don't make a ton of practical sense to me as a path towards new medical treatments.
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For the most part, we don't yet *know* which genes and other biomarkers are predictive of which diseases. So these kits are of limited practical value except in the occasional case of a disease with a well-known genetic component.
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Fine, you might say -- the customers will just be curious quantified-self types. But that's a limited population. (Not knocking it; I'm a 23andme customer myself.) But insurers won't cover tests that don't have a *very* solid medical use case.
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A lot of genetic testing companies go that way anyhow -- testing for loss-of-function mutations in genes with well-established disease associations, and getting covered by insurance. That's a valid business model & useful service, but it isn't discovering novel gene associations.
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What you need, in order to go the discovery route, is to generate large datasets of users' biomarkers, *along* with their health info, and run correlations. But this will be stymied by a.) the small market for "entertainment purposes only" quantified-self stuff,
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and b.) users' inertia or inaccuracy about entering all their medical history info.
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Meanwhile, large (>100,000) biobanks funded by universities, governments, and nonprofits, may be an equally good resource for research discovering new correlations between biomarkers and diseases. Some countries collect data & samples from all their citizens!
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Replying to @s_r_constantin
To what degree so you see such data collection affecting privacy? As a lay person, if like to know if Gattaca to situations are possible.
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It is absolutely possible to uniquely identify someone by their genome (or even an array of SNPs, maybe.) And risk prediction scores for polygenic traits (such as heart disease or schizophrenia) are getting better. Yes, Gattaca is technically possible.
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