Google-Backed 23andMe Seeks Parkinson’s Patients Spit (Update1)
By Rob Waters
March 12 (Bloomberg) -- 23andMe, the gene-testing company backed by Google Inc., wants to collect DNA from the spit of 10,000 people with Parkinson’s disease to hunt for common genes that may cause the illness or predict patients’ response to drugs.
To entice patients to participate, the Mountain View, California-based company will offer to test them for $25, a fraction of the normal $399 fee. The quest is personal for Ann Wojcicki, who helped start 23andMe in 2006. Her husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has a gene variant that increases his risk of developing the neurological condition, which afflicts his mother.
One million North Americans and more than 4 million people worldwide have Parkinson’s, which causes people to tremble, shake and lose control of their body’s movements. The condition comes in different forms, and its causes are poorly understood, with a handful of genes known to increase the risk. 23andMe hopes to uncover others.
“It’s an incredibly interesting experiment but it is an experiment,” said Story Landis, director of the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Landis said it was unclear what value the data gathered by 23andMe would have, unless the project can link individual patients to specific forms of the disease.
Research Partners
23andMe, a closely held company, is working with two nonprofit research groups, the Parkinson’s Institute in Sunnyvale, California, and the New York-based Michael J. Fox Foundation, which was founded in 2000 by Fox, an actor, who suffers from Parkinson’s.
In addition to genes, environmental factors including chemical exposure and drug use may also play a role in development of the illness.
“We want to try and find out if there are other genetic variations that are associated with Parkinson’s or with rapid progression or slow progression,” said Wojcicki, in a telephone interview yesterday. “Also, why some people respond well to therapy, some people don’t, and some develop resistance faster.”
The two groups are allowing 23andMe to invite their members to participate in the research by sending in saliva samples from which DNA can be extracted and tested.
People who tell the company they want to sign up by March 22 will be eligible for the discounted rate. They will be sent a “spit kit,” as the company calls it, to gather their saliva and mail it.
Web Questionnaire
They’ll also be asked to participate in Internet-based surveys, answering questions about their symptoms, history, use of medications and the way the disease progressed.
The company will perform what is known as a genome-wide association study using the genetic material it gathers, seeking to identify common patterns and associate those with the disease in its different forms.
“If it’s successful and they get the 10,000 people, it will undoubtedly provide a lot of information,” said Eric Topol, head of the genomic medicine program at Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California.
Topol said the gene-association study could enable researchers to find regions of patients’ chromosomes, which he likened to zip codes, where troublesome genes may be located.
“We don’t have the genes that explain Parkinson’s disease at this point,” Topol said. The 23andMe data “could advance knowledge tremendously. They might find genes that connect to responsiveness to therapy, or to lack of response or to exquisite response.”
Web Community Sought
Although Parkinson’s is variable, “in all cases dopamine neurons die but there can be a variety of different reasons why they die,” Landis said. If 23andMe collects data from “a really disparate mix of people, even though they get 10,000, it may not be too helpful.”
The patients who send in their spit and answer questions over the Internet will become part of 23andMe’s “community” of patients, and will be informed about their own genetic patterns and any discoveries that are made. Community members will be able to connect with each other and stay in touch with 23andMe over time, with the company continuing to survey them and share information as new insights are gleaned, Wojcicki said.
The idea, she said, is to use the Internet to accelerate progress in understanding and treating the disease.
“We’re very frustrated with the pace of research discoveries and we felt one way to accelerate it would be to empower individuals and form communities and self-create a research cohort,” she said. “We also believe we are really democratizing research in a new way.”
Google invested about $3.9 million in 23andMe in 2007. Brin is helping to subsidize the reduced cost for the gene-testing that gets performed for each patient, Wojcicki said. 23andMe wouldn’t disclose the extent of his contribution.
To contact the reporter on this story: Rob Waters in San Francisco at rwaters5@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: March 12, 2009 14:10 EDT |
