At Nature: Genetic profiling firm 23andMe nearing extinction?
Early last year, we looked at the woes of formerly Cool genetic profiling company 23andMe. Things have gotten worse, it seems, and now here’s science writer Diana Kwon’s take at Nature:
The decline marks a fall from grace for a pioneering company once valued at US$6 billion. Over the past few years, the firm has faced mounting challenges, including financial losses and a huge data breach, although this did not involve DNA data. In September, most of the company’s board resigned, and in November the firm said it would cut 40% of its workforce and halt its therapeutics division, which had drugs in clinical trials.
“What went wrong at 23andMe? Why the genetic-data giant risks collapse,” January 23, 2025
So what went wrong?
One key issue is that DNA-testing companies are selling a single-use product. “Once somebody has done it, they don’t need to do it again,” says Hank Greely, a lawyer and bioethicist at Stanford University in California. “Risks collapse”
Indeed. As we said back then, “You will only have one genome throughout your life. You told everyone that you found out that you are descended from Genghis Khan, and after that — what?” Most people sense instinctively that they had better not keep bringing the subject up…
A bigger problem is that the proposed aftermarket — the use of the acquired genetic data to predict health risks — is fraught with risks and problems:
But despite such consumer tests winning FDA approval, clinicians have continued to question their reliability and utility. False negatives might reassure a person that they don’t have a disease-causing mutation that they actually have, and false positives might lead people to seek preventive interventions, such as surgery to reduce cancer risk, that they don’t need. “Risks collapse”
Greely points out the obvious: Suppose the tests truly are useful? Then they should be standard medical procedure. After all, a detected high genetic risk of bone cancer — for example — is not just personal information. It is much more significant for patient, physician, and countless others than, say, knowing that Genghis Khan or Henry VIII was a distant ancestor.
If 23andMe does prove that such testing is useful, it will soon be dwarfed by the impact and remembered as a critical pioneer — even if it vanishes as a company.
You may also wish to read: Why is 23andMe — the hot gene testing startup — now worthless? Birthed in Silicon Valley among high-tech go-getters, it should still be steaming along, right? But traditional bedrock business realities cursed it at its birth.