Oklahoma Sen. Elizabeth Warren made headlines this week by publicizing the results of a DNA ancestry test meant to dispel allegations – particularly from President Donald Trump – that her claims of Native American heritage were fabricated. But while her announcement drew mixed opinions from several quarters, it showcased how important a business genetic testing has become and how much it has grown.
That growth raises an interesting question: In a market dominated by the likes of 23andMe, how does a new entrant distinguish itself from the rest of the pack?
Research indicates that genetic testing – particularly to measure susceptibility to disease – is a big business that’s set to get bigger. According to a report in June by Global Market Insights, the global market is expected to exceed $22 billion by 2024, driven in part by interest in testing for early detection and prevention of cancers and genetic diseases. 23AndMe presents an anecdotal case that illustrates that growth: Last March, the Food and Drug Administration approved a test from the company that detects BRCA1/2 mutations to determine the risk of breast cancer, while in July of this year, it signed a four-year drug-discovery partnership with British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline.
Into this market steps Helix, a personal genomics firm founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Carlos, California, near San Francisco. The company has seen a steady flow of money come in, announcing in June the final close of a $200 million Series B financing led by Tim Draper’s venture capital firm, DFJ, with participation from founding investors Illumina, Warburg Pincus, Sutter Hill Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Mayo Clinic, with Singapore’s Temasek closing out the final portion.
Helix co-founder Justin Kao will take part in a fireside chat at next month’s MedCity ENGAGE conference in San Diego with MedCity News Editor-in-Chief Arundhati Parmar.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
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In a phone interview, Kao said one of the biggest factors setting Helix apart is its business model. “A lot of people think of it as like the App Store, with all sorts of developers building things on top of the Apple platform,” he said. The company provides back-end services like data storage and payments, while developers can use its application program interfaces – much as they would with Apple or Amazon – to create a range of products. One such company is London-based fashion outfit Dot One, which uses a particular portion of customers’ DNA sequences to create patterned scarves. On the health side, the company has also partnered with the Mayo Clinic, which uses patients’ genomes to look for risks of genetic diseases, particularly autosomal-dominant ones like familial hypercholesterolemia.
Patient engagement is another important aspect of the company’s model. “We think of every single person on the platform as a ‘user’ and treat them as a user like a tech company would,” Kao said. Helix’s vision is that data should be owned and controlled by individuals, who should be able to use it as they see fit. Along with patient engagement, privacy is also emphasized, and the company does not sell or share people’s data unless they explicitly ask it to. For example, Dot One only gets to look at a small range of a person’s genome to create its products, he said. “We’re heading toward a world where everybody is sequenced,” he said, adding that this is a theme he’d like to touch on at the ENGAGE conference. “I don’t know if it’s controversial with the audience, but each person should own and control their own data.”
Photo: jxfzsy, Getty Images
