Some early thoughts on Navigenics

It's been a long, long wait, but Navigenics has finally officially entered the personal genomics arena. Like the Me Two (23andMe and deCODEme), Navigenics will be offering to determine the sequence at hundreds of thousands of commonly variable positions throughout your genome, which it will use to make predictions about your risk for a variety of common diseases such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The service will cost US$2,500, compared to US$1,000 for the two major competing offers.

The Wired blog has the facts. A few early thoughts:

1. Navigenics would probably struggle to compete head-to-head with 23andMe, which has a much stronger public profile, a funkier website, and offers a significantly cheaper service (albeit with fewer markers); BUT
   

2. It's pretty clear they're aiming at a different market niche altogether. Just compare the two websites (23andMe, Navigenics): 23andMe will appeal more to the hip young web-savvy childless yuppie who wants to know more about him/herself and build up some cool conversation topics (their website is all about "Your personal journey of genetic discovery"); Navigenics is aiming for the sober, older executive with kids who watches their weight and cholesterol and heads to the gym three times a week (website quote: "I want to be part of all the big moments in my son's life, so I'm doing everything I can to stay healthy.")

3. Providing access to genetic counselling and promoting physician education, while certainly praise-worthy, is all part of this market positioning. Navigenics is trying to say that they're above all the hype and frivolity of 23andMe; all they care about is your future health, and they care about that in a deeply earnest, professional yet compassionate manner. (The genetic counselling video sums up the mood nicely.)

4. Navigenics has started with a genotyping service that is CLIA-certified - unlike 23andMe, who had to change labs to a CLIA-certified facility a few weeks back (causing disruptions to their service).

5. Navigenics offers a long-term DNA storage service, which is a clever business move. It will be that much easier to convince customers to purchase an extra DNA test in a year's time - or whole-genome sequencing in five years' time - if they don't have to go through the hassle of re-submitting a mouth swab. Never underestimate the role of convenience in shaping consumer decisions.

6. The "relative lifetime risk" analysis offered by Navigenics seems as though it will provide more impressive-sounding numbers than the absolute risk estimates offered by 23andMe and deCODEme, but I'm not sure how statistically sound it is to extrapolate odds ratios from genetic association studies to total lifetime risk (especially given that the strength of genetic associations is known to vary with age). Would any statisticians out there care to dissect Navigenics' white paper on their methods?

7. Finally - and this is completely a personal thing - there's absolutely no way I'd buy into a service that didn't provide me with complete and unfettered access to my raw SNP data. Both 23andMe and deCODEme offer customers the ability to download and analyse their own data; this isn't the case for Navigenics, according to the Wired article. That's a complete deal-breaker for me, but admittedly it's unlikely to have much of an impact on the chiselled, athletic executive types featured on Navigenics' front page, who (understandably) have no particular interest in the raw data but simply want to know their risk of stroke and heart disease (presumably so they can stay alive and healthy long enough to play football with their chiselled, athletic kids).

Cynicism aside, I've got to hand it to Navigenics: they've managed to neatly differentiate themselves from the competition, and they're now poised to capture a lucrative high-income section of the market that has been surprisingly poorly targeted by existing personal genomics companies.

Anyway, you'll no doubt read a lot more about this over the next day or two. Genetics and Health has an ongoing (and thus far relentlessly positive) series of posts on Navigenics. I'm particularly interested to see what Steve Murphy has to say - it seems to me that Navigenics has managed to avoid most of the problems that he's been slamming 23andMe for over the last few months.

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