Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe’s CEO, wants to improve drug discovery with big data and tailor drugs to individuals so they are more effective.
When 23andMe launched its first product—a mail-order test that analyzes DNA from a saliva sample—it was aiming to help people take better control of their health. Now, as the company is beginning to get FDA approvals to tell consumers if they carry genes for particular diseases, 23andMe is also taking a new direction: The company wants to use the same genetic data to make better drugs.
“I really want to prove that we can revolutionize drug discovery, in almost a Moneyball kind of moment,” Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe, told a crowd at Civic Hall at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival. “Having a human database can give us so much of an edge—we can do it so much faster and so much more inexpensively.”
Right now, despite the billions spent to develop drugs, once a drug is approved, relatively little is known about how consumers are actually using medications and how well different people respond to a drug in real life.
“Most medications don’t work effectively for a lot people,” Wojcicki said. “Everyone in the room, I guarantee, has taken a medication and it didn’t work. Or had a severe adverse reaction, or it wasn’t a good experience…That’s exactly what we need to change.”
By following patients as they use a drug and collecting detailed data—or better understanding the genetics behind a particular disease—drugs could be tailored to work better. Prescription bottles might eventually include genetic details on the label.
