Agenda for Personalized Medicine: Answers November 18, 2009

A few weeks ago, Pauline C. Ng, Sarah S. Murray, Samuel Levy and J. Craig Venter published a quite an interesting piece  in the October 8, 2009 issue of Nature. In this publication, they had really relevant suggestions for Direct-to-consumer genomics companies such as Navigenics or 23andMe. Now, surprisingly, they two giants published an answer together:

Dear Editor:

We read with interest the Opinion piece entitled “An agenda for personalized medicine” in the October 8, 2009 edition of Nature. Our two companies, though commercially distinct with differentiated products, would like to respond to this piece jointly to show our commitment to working together in an open, transparent fashion.

Our companies agree with most of the recommendations Ng and colleagues made.  Without doubt, genotype-based risk prediction for common, multifactorial diseases is still in its infancy.  More work must be done to standardize markers used; to better explain the contribution of genetics to common, complex diseases; and to incorporate common genetic variants into clinical practice.  Each company, however, has a few points of disagreement and/or explanation it feels important to articulate.  These points from each company follow.

And excerpts from their respective answers:

Response by Navigenics:

With regard to the specific recommendations, Navigenics agrees with most of the suggestions.  For example, we agree with the authors that results showing less than average risk should not be a primary point of focus, a viewpoint that has been incorporated into our service offering in a variety of ways.

Response by 23andMe:

We would like to discuss two technical points about the article.  The authors presented these points in a relatively balanced manner but the subtleties have led to misinterpretations in subsequent media coverage.