person:hank greely

The rise and fall and rise again of 23andMe : Nature News & Comment
►http://www.nature.com/news/the-rise-and-fall-and-rise-again-of-23andme-1.22801

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23andme has always been the most visible face of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, and it is more formidable now than ever before. In September, the company announced that it had raised US$250 million: more than the total amount of capital raised by the company since its inception. Investors estimate that it is worth more than $1 billion, making it a ’unicorn’ in Silicon Valley parlance — a rare and valuable thing to behold. But for scientists, 23andme’s real worth is in its data. With more than 2 million customers, the company hosts by far the largest collection of gene-linked health data anywhere. It has racked up 80 publications, signed more than 20 partnerships with pharmaceutical firms and started a therapeutics division of its own.

“They have quietly become the largest genetic study the world has ever known,” says cardiologist Euan Ashley at Stanford University, California.

Scientists, meanwhile, were dubious. Family history was and is still a more powerful indicator than genes are for predicting the risk of most diseases. “The evidence is increasingly strong that the benefits of direct-to-consumer testing for these kinds of indications are somewhere between small and zero,” says Stanford University lawyer and ethicist Hank Greely, a long-time critic of the company.

#Génomique #23andme

Gene Editing for ‘Designer Babies’? Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/science/gene-editing-embryos-designer-babies.html

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Here is what science is highly unlikely to be able to do: genetically predestine a child’s Ivy League acceptance letter, front-load a kid with Stephen Colbert’s one-liners, or bake Beyonce’s vocal range into a baby.

That’s because none of those talents arise from a single gene mutation, or even from an easily identifiable number of genes. Most human traits are nowhere near that simple.

“Right now, we know nothing about genetic enhancement,” said Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford. “We’re never going to be able to say, honestly, ‘This embryo looks like a 1550 on the two-part SAT.’”

Even with an apparently straightforward physical characteristic like height, genetic manipulation would be a tall order. Some scientists estimate height is influenced by as many as 93,000 genetic variations. A recent study identified 697 of them.

Talents and traits aren’t the only thing that are genetically complex. So are most physical diseases and psychiatric disorders. The genetic message is not carried in a 140-character tweet — it resembles a shelf full of books with chapters, subsections and footnotes.

So embryonic editing is unlikely to prevent most medical problems.

But about 10,000 medical conditions are linked to specific mutations, including Huntington’s disease, cancers caused by BRCA genes, Tay-Sachs disease, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and some cases of early-onset Alzheimer’s. Repairing the responsible mutations in theory could eradicate these diseases from the so-called germline, the genetic material passed from one generation to the next. No future family members would inherit them.

A composite image showing the development of embryos after injection of a gene-correcting enzyme and sperm from a donor with a genetic mutation known to cause hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Credit Oregon Health & Science University

But testing editing approaches on each mutation will require scientists to find the right genetic signpost, often an RNA molecule, to guide the gene-snipping tool.

#génomique #designer_baby #thérapeutique_génique #CRISPR