Yes, 23andme is challenging the traditional way we are conducting clinical trials. In a press release today, 23andme is announcing a partnership with the the Parkinson's Institute to discover genetic and environmental factors of Parkinson's disease.
Six months ago, my colleagues and I send out a grant proposal arguing the potential efficiencies of combining consumer genomics with clinical trials. Although I am frustrated to learn a week ago that our proposal was not funded, I am very happy to see the press release today from 23andme, which essentially validated our proposal.
On a separate note, the Wall Street Journal reports today on a shortage of participation in cancer clinical trails, especially minority groups.
| Bottlenecks of Traditional Clinical Trials | 23andme's Innovative Solutions |
| Patient recruiting | Social network |
| Cost of SNP scans | May do cost-sharing with participants |
Similar to the early days of sequencing and bioinformatics development, I would expect to see the industry driving the innovative applications, instead of the academics.
There are "2.0" hypes on everything recently, including the "Research 2.0" in the press release. Even though there are a lot of details to be worked out, I am still very positive on it.
3 comments:
Well Simon,
We'll see how many patients they get this way......My guess....not a true national representative. I don't see too many under-representes minorities signing up for the pay for play research. Personally, I think this idea is exclusionary and typical of the aflluent intelligencia. It is just plain foolish
Sorry, but that's my 2 cents
-Steve
www.thegenesherpa.blogspot.com
Under-represented miorities? Jeeze, if they don't bother to participate, that is too bad for them.
Hey dude cool information :)
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