In three recent deals, drugmakers are betting that personal genetic maps will finally fulfill their early promise to unlock secrets and cure diseases.
At the same time, the agreements revived questions about privacy protections and how useful personal genetic data will prove to be.
Roche Holding AG (RHHBY) committed $1 billion to take control of Foundation Medicine Inc. (FMI), which sequences genes of cancer patients, aiming to customize treatment. Roches Genentech unit said it would pay as much as $60 million for access to 23andMe Inc.s data on customers with Parkinsons disease. And Pfizer Inc. (PFE) reached a deal that will allow the drugmaker to analyze personal genetic information from 650,000 23andMe customers, without giving terms.
The pacts, together with 23andMes announcement that it will enter into partnerships with eight other companies this year, boosted confidence in the commercial value of gene mapping. Since the first draft of a full human genome was deciphered in 2001, researchers have predicted breakthroughs in understanding the origins of disease, only to be frustrated as business developed slowly and regulatory issues cropped up.
Foundation Medicine and 23andMe were created to serve consumers directly and are not developing medicines. Foundation Medicines clients pay to have more than 300 genes in their tumors sequenced, and then receive counseling about voluntarily entering trials of drugs that may address genetic abnormalities in their cancers. Customers of 23andMe, on the other hand, are encouraged to learn about yourself through genetics.
Now drugmakers are seeing research value in the genetic databases the companies have created.
Core to our mission is making data available to other researchers to advance genetic discoveries, and we are committed to doing so in the most responsible way possible, said Angela Calman-Wonson, a spokeswoman for Mountain View, California-based 23andMe.
Roches purchase of control of Foundation Medicine shows how integral genetic testing has become to cancer treatment, said Eric Topol, chief academic officer at Scripps Health, a health-care system in San Diego.
This is the biggest commercial validation that sequencing in cancer is getting legs, he said in a telephone interview. Were starting to see the beginning of the cancer sequencing story play out.
Companies are betting that sharing data on patients, their conditions and response to treatments will make health care more effective and efficient. Closely held Sophia Genetics, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, is building a secure network of patients genomic data that can be shared among hospitals and clinicians in Europe.
Go here to read the rest:
Deals For Genetic Data Raise Issues of Privacy, Sharing