 | |
| Type | Public (NYSE: TMO) |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Waltham, Massachusetts, USA |
Key people | Marc N. Casper (President & CEO) |
| Website | www.thermofisher.com |
Navigenics, Inc. was a privately held personal genomics company, based in Foster City, California, that used genetic testing to help people determine their individual risk for dozens of health conditions. [1]
Navigenics was co-founded in 2006 by David Agus, M.D., a prostate cancer specialist who is a Professor of Medicine at the University of Southern California and Director of the USC Center for Applied Molecular Medicine and the USC Westside Prostate Cancer Center in Los Angeles, and Dietrich Stephan, Ph.D., member of the Board of Directors of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, current CEO of Silicon Valley Biosystems, former Chairman of Neurogenomics and Deputy Director for Discovery Research at the Translational Genomics Research Institute. [2]
In July 2012, Navigenics was acquired by Life Technologies, [3] which was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in February, 2014.
In June 2008, California health regulators sent cease-and-desist letters to Navigenics and 12 other genetic testing firms, including 23andMe. [4] The state regulators asked the companies to prove a physician was involved in the ordering of each test and that state clinical laboratory licensing requirements were being fulfilled. The controversy sparked a flurry of interest in the relatively new field, as well as a number of media articles, including an opinion piece on Wired.com entitled, “Attention, California Health Dept.: My DNA Is My Data.” [5] In August 2008, Navigenics and 23andMe received state licenses allowing the companies to continue to do business in California. [6]
Genetic testing, also known as DNA testing, is used to identify changes in DNA sequence or chromosome structure. Genetic testing can also include measuring the results of genetic changes, such as RNA analysis as an output of gene expression, or through biochemical analysis to measure specific protein output. In a medical setting, genetic testing can be used to diagnose or rule out suspected genetic disorders, predict risks for specific conditions, or gain information that can be used to customize medical treatments based on an individual's genetic makeup. Genetic testing can also be used to determine biological relatives, such as a child's biological parentage through DNA paternity testing, or be used to broadly predict an individual's ancestry. Genetic testing of plants and animals can be used for similar reasons as in humans, to gain information used for selective breeding, or for efforts to boost genetic diversity in endangered populations.
deCODE genetics is a biopharmaceutical company based in Reykjavík, Iceland. The company was founded in 1996 by Kári Stefánsson with the aim of using population genetics studies to identify variations in the human genome associated with common diseases, and to apply these discoveries "to develop novel methods to identify, treat and prevent diseases."
Personalized medicine, also referred to as precision medicine, is a medical model that separates people into different groups—with medical decisions, practices, interventions and/or products being tailored to the individual patient based on their predicted response or risk of disease. The terms personalized medicine, precision medicine, stratified medicine and P4 medicine are used interchangeably to describe this concept though some authors and organisations use these expressions separately to indicate particular nuances.
Genetic discrimination occurs when people treat others differently because they have or are perceived to have a gene mutation(s) that causes or increases the risk of an inherited disorder. It may also refer to any and all discrimination based on the genotype of a person rather than their individual merits, including that related to race, although the latter would be more appropriately included under racial discrimination. Some legal scholars have argued for a more precise and broader definition of genetic discrimination: "Genetic discrimination should be defined as when an individual is subjected to negative treatment, not as a result of the individual's physical manifestation of disease or disability, but solely because of the individual's genetic composition." Genetic Discrimination is considered to have its foundations in genetic determinism and genetic essentialism, and is based on the concept of genism, i.e. distinctive human characteristics and capacities are determined by genes.
Myriad Genetics, Inc. is an American genetic testing and precision medicine company based in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. Myriad employs a number of proprietary technologies that permit doctors and patients to understand the genetic basis of human disease and the role that genes play in the onset, progression and treatment of disease. This information is used to guide the development of new products that assess an individual's risk for developing disease later in life, identify a patient's likelihood of responding to a particular drug therapy, assess a patient's risk of disease progression and disease recurrence, and measure disease activity.
23andMe Holding Co. is a publicly held personal genomics and biotechnology company based in South San Francisco, California. It is best known for providing a direct-to-consumer genetic testing service in which customers provide a saliva sample that is laboratory analysed, using single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping, to generate reports relating to the customer's ancestry and genetic predispositions to health-related topics. The company's name is derived from the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a wild-type human cell.
Rick Antonius Kittles is an American biologist specializing in human genetics and a Senior Vice President for Research at the Morehouse School of Medicine. He is of African-American ancestry, and achieved renown in the 1990s for his pioneering work in tracing the ancestry of African Americans via DNA testing.
Personal genomics or consumer genetics is the branch of genomics concerned with the sequencing, analysis and interpretation of the genome of an individual. The genotyping stage employs different techniques, including single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis chips, or partial or full genome sequencing. Once the genotypes are known, the individual's variations can be compared with the published literature to determine likelihood of trait expression, ancestry inference and disease risk.
David B. Agus is an American physician and author who serves as a professor of medicine and engineering at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine and Viterbi School of Engineering and the Founding Director and CEO of the Lawrence J. Ellison Institute for Transformative Medicine. He is also the cofounder of several personalized medicine companies and a contributor to CBS News on health topics.
Paul Billings is an American doctor, lecturer, researcher, professor, and consultant on genetic information. His major research interests include the impact of genomic information and biotechnology on society, the integration of genomics and diagnostics in to health and medical care and individualized genomic medicine. Dr. Paul Billings is the author of more than 250 publications and books on genomic medicine, has spoken at numerous medical conferences, and appeared on talk shows such as The Oprah Show and 60 Minutes. He is currently the chief medical officer of Natera, chairman of Biological Dynamics, Inc. and Plumcare LLC, and CEO of Synergenz Bioscience, Inc.
Brandon Colby is an American physician and writer on predictive medicine and genetic testing. Colby specializes in Personal Genomics and Anti-aging / Age Management Medicine, and he has invented genetic technologies to personalize services and products to an individual's genes. He is the founder and CEO of Sequencing.com.
Bennett C. Greenspan is an American businessman. His business ventures have covered industries from real estate to the .com boom. Though he has mainly worked in the fields of photography and genetic testing, he is best known for his pioneering work in genetic genealogy.
Gene by Gene is a commercial genetic testing company based in Houston, Texas. The company was owned by Bennett Greenspan and Max Blankfeld, and was the parent company of Family Tree DNA. In January of 2021, Gene by Gene was acquired by US based parent company myDNA Inc. Gene by Gene and Australia company myDNA Life Private Ltd. are both subsidiaries of parent company, myDNA Inc. The current Chief Executive Officer of myDNA Inc. is, Dr Lior Rauchberger.
Personalized medicine involves medical treatments based on the characteristics of individual patients, including their medical history, family history, and genetics. Although personal genetic information is becoming increasingly important in healthcare, there is a lack of sufficient education in medical genetics among physicians and the general public. For example, pharmacogenomics is practiced worldwide by only a limited number of pharmacists, although most pharmacy colleges in the United States now include it in their curriculum. It is also increasingly common for genetic testing to be offered directly to consumers, who subsequently seek out educational materials and bring their results to their doctors. Issues involving genetic testing also invariably lead to ethical and legal concerns, such as the potential for inadvertent effects on family members, increased insurance rates, or increased psychological stress.
A biological patent is a patent on an invention in the field of biology that by law allows the patent holder to exclude others from making, using, selling, or importing the protected invention for a limited period of time. The scope and reach of biological patents vary among jurisdictions, and may include biological technology and products, genetically modified organisms and genetic material. The applicability of patents to substances and processes wholly or partially natural in origin is a subject of debate.
Elaine Ann Ostrander is an American geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. She holds a number of professional academic appointments, currently serving as Distinguished and Senior Investigator and head of the NHGRI Section of Comparative Genomics; and Chief of the Cancer Genetics and Comparative Genomics Branch. She is known for her research on prostate cancer susceptibility in humans and for conducting genetic investigations with the Canis familiaris —the domestic dog— model, which she has used to study disease susceptibility and frequency and other aspects of natural variation across mammals. In 2007, her laboratory showed that much of the variation in body size of domestic dogs is due to sequence changes in a single gene encoding a growth-promoting protein.
Laurence H. Kedes was an American scientist in the fields of gene expression, genomics, and cellular differentiation. His first faculty position was at Stanford University (1970-1989), where he was promoted to full professor in the Department of Medicine and focused on basic molecular biology and gene expression. In 1988, the University of Southern California (USC) recruited Kedes to spearhead a campus-wide initiative to strengthen their molecular biology and genetics research programs. At USC, Kedes conceived and developed the Institute of Genetic Medicine, becoming its founding director (1989-2008) as well as the William Keck Professor (1988-2009) and Chair (1988-2002) of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Genetic privacy involves the concept of personal privacy concerning the storing, repurposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to one's genetic information. This concept also encompasses privacy regarding the ability to identify specific individuals by their genetic sequence, and the potential to gain information on specific characteristics about that person via portions of their genetic information, such as their propensity for specific diseases or their immediate or distant ancestry.
Color is a population health technology company which provides genetic tests and analysis directly to patients as well as through employers. The product focuses on genes that indicate risk for heart disease, cancer, and that affect medication response.
Personalized genomics is the human genetics-derived study of analyzing and interpreting individualized genetic information by genome sequencing to identify genetic variations compared to the library of known sequences. International genetics communities have spared no effort from the past and have gradually cooperated to prosecute research projects to determine DNA sequences of the human genome using DNA sequencing techniques. The methods that are the most commonly used are whole exome sequencing and whole genome sequencing. Both approaches are used to identify genetic variations. Genome sequencing became more cost-effective over time, and made it applicable in the medical field, allowing scientists to understand which genes are attributed to specific diseases.