Scientific Madman Venter: How to push genetic testing to the public?

Fifteen years ago, J. Craig Venter “educated” the government to spend $100 million to sequence a person's genome (actually his own genome). Eighteen months ago, he founded Human Longevity Inc (HLI) in California, which is now operating the world's largest DNA sequencing laboratory. The company has reached an agreement with South Africa's Discovery Health Insurance Company to genetically sequence and interpret Discovery's customers and use these genetic information as part of a health test report.

Scientific Madman Venter: How to push genetic testing to the public?

Discovery has a total of 4 million insureds in South Africa and the UK. The company's CEO, Jonathan Broomberg, said: "We hope to achieve a breakthrough in the field of individualized health, and hope to have 100,000 in the next few years. Participate in. People will worry about knowing the negative news or the cost of testing their genetic information is too high, but we are still optimistic." This cooperation, HLI will provide customers with genetic testing for only 250 US dollars, Discovery also Half of the cost will be subsidized. In general, BRCA genetic testing costs between $400 and $4,000 worldwide.

Through the testing service, HLI will collect a large number of African exome information. Although the exome only accounts for 2-3% of the entire genome, it includes almost all pathogenic genes, such as the main cancer risk factor BRCA. Genes, colorectal cancer, and susceptibility factors for heart disease. Genetic data will be submitted to a doctor or genetic counselor, including disease risk, health advice, and more.

In 2014, Venter, Peter Diamandis and Robert Hariri co-founded HLI with the original intention of building the world's largest database of human genetic and medical information. They hope that through this database, they can sort out the relationship between disease and genes, and predict disease risk based on genetic information. Venter said frankly: "I think we know less than 1% of the useful information in the human genome. If we don't build a large database, then we are at best a genetic testing company. In the future, we need to interpret all the data."

The company has accumulated genomic information by providing sequencing services to companies such as Genentech and Cleveland Clinic. They will identify the patient's health information. This cooperation will also adopt this strategy. According to Broomberg: "This will help to put the genetic information of a large number of Africans into global research, which is currently lacking."

HLI formed a team of machine learning experts in Silicon Valley led by Franz Och, former head of Google Translate, to establish health risk prediction models and individual genetic feature prediction models. Volunteers involved in the study have detailed facial features, and HLI is trying to predict the appearance through genes. Only a large amount of research can find the relationship between genes and phenotypes. For example, the height of an individual depends largely on the height of his or her parents, and there are at least hundreds of genes that affect height, each of which has a role to play. Currently HLI has been able to accurately predict the color of the eye through genetic information.

In October of this year, HLI will open a center called “Health Nucleus” at its headquarters, which will provide genetic testing and health services to specific personnel such as athletes. The center is one of Venter's most optimistic centers, providing customers with a complete set of genome analysis, sequencing of gut microbes, analysis of more than 200 chemicals, and whole-body MRI scans. The "Health Nucleus" service is priced at $25,000. Each participant will be part of their database, and as the research progresses, the database will continue to be updated.

HLI also intends to provide other testing programs, such as pre-pregnancy screening (mainly to detect genetic risk factors), sequencing of clinical tumor patients, and screening for newborns. The development of these plans will bring the company market competitiveness.

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