Over at Eye on DNA, Hsien wonders about the effects of a slowing economy on the personal genomics market. Well, no matter how hard it's getting to make your mortgage repayments, you can probably still afford personal genomics if it doesn't cost you anything:
In New Jersey, meanwhile, the nonprofit Coriell Institute for Medical Research is developing a service that will test for a slate of validated genetic markers, and provide free — yes, free — information and analysis for common diseases. The institute plans to sign up 10,000 people in the next two years, and eventually enlist 100,000 people.
(From a recent piece in Wired). You can sign up here; there is a pretty extensive FAQ here. Note that you will need to physically attend an enrollment session at the Coriell Institute in New Jersey. Also, I see that Coriell is adopting the paternalistic "need to know" approach pioneered by Navigenics, and won't provide participants with any information about genetic variants that aren't "medically actionable" (e.g. incurable disease risk variants), although they will hand out information on non-disease traits like eye colour. Still, if I lived anywhere near New Jersey I'd be signing up right now rather than wasting time writing this post.
(As an aside, I wonder why Coriell is using a saliva-based method when it could be using its considerable expertise to create and store cell lines from blood - essentially generating an endless source of DNA for researchers to analyse. That seems like a missed opportunity that someone will be seriously regretting in a few years when there's no DNA left for whole-genome sequencing, or epigenome analysis, or whatever.)
If you're more ambitious, you could also sign up for (eventual) free whole-genome sequencing via the Personal Genome Project.
Subscribe to Genetic Future.
1 comments:
Daniel,
As a member of the Informed Cohort Oversight Board of the DVPMP, let me point you in the direction of one of my several blog posts on the subject.
http://thegenesherpa.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-have-to-start-posting-more-on.html
Navigenics didn't pioneer the board and evaluation approach. Mike Christman at Coriell DID. They borrowed it. We sit for our first meeting this June. Our charge is multi-fold and we will determine best practices in genomic medicine. Something we have been doing at Helix Health as well.
This is a fantastic project and in fact the first of its kind. That is why I will also be submitting MY sample for the DVPMP.
-Steve
www.thegenesherpa.blogspot.com
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