Health NewsWho Will be deCODEing Me Now ?
I'll be speaking at the Electronic Health Information and Privacy Conference in Ottawa this week and the latest in the financial saga of deCODE should make interesting fodder for discussion. If you're in the Ottawa area there is still time to register at http://www.ehip.ca/ to not only see what researchers and policy makers have to say, but to share your own thoughts.
Here is what deCODE sent to clients like me (mikesgene is my username and twitter handle in case you're wondering ) in an e-mail last night, and I'd be interested in how you think this will play out in the direct-to-consumer generic testing world:
"Dear Mikesgene
As a valued subscriber to deCODEme, we wanted to write to you directly to let you know about some important developments in the company and how we believe these will underpin our ability to continue to keep you in the forefront of understanding what the latest advances in genetics mean to you.
For the past several months, deCODE has been working on restructuring its operations. One of the principal goals of this effort has been to enable us to find new investment that will continue our work in human genetics and to offer to our customers the products and services that are based upon our expertise and capabilities. Today we have announced concrete steps in that direction. This morning deCODE genetics, Inc. filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 protection in the United States. At the same time, there has also been filed with the court an offer by Saga Investments LLC to purchase deCODE’s Icelandic subsidiary, Islensk Erfdagreining (IE). IE, which is not declaring bankruptcy, carries out all of deCODE’s human genetics work and and provides deCODEme.
We believe this offer provides a firm foundation for continuing to offer you the same path breaking science and service you expect from deCODEme. Saga is led by Polaris Venture Partners and Arch Venture Partners, two leading technology investors who were involved in the founding of deCODE. While other higher bids may be made for IE under the Chapter 11 process, this offer, even if no others are forthcoming, provides resources for us to continue operations without interruption during the Chapter 11 proceedings, and would provide up front funds sufficient to support operations for two years. With the filing today, deCODE has also asked the Court for the customary authority to continue to manage its operations and serve its customers during the proceedings.
For this reason, we do not expect this to have any impact on your deCODEme account. As ever, our commitment at deCODEme is to keep you in the forefront of progress in understanding the human genome and what it means for you and your health.
Please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our customer support team if you have any questions.
With best regards,
the deCODEme team "
The Price of Genome Sequencing
Genome sequencing costs are certainly coming down. This past week, I saw several headlines extolling the value of reduced costs of the complete sequencing of a genome. One such article indicates that a firm called Complete Genomics has reduced the costs of consumables for nanoarrays to between slightly under $2,000 to just over $8,000. According to Cliff Reid, chairman, president and chief executive, "We've demonstrated that it's possible to accurately and affordably sequence and detect variants across entire human genomes". In another article, researchers at the University of Queensland revealed that canola has been sequenced: “By applying novel combinations of next-generation sequencing and assembly methods, the researchers were able to decipher the genome sequence at a fraction of the cost than if they had employed traditional methods.”
Helping You Keep Current with Genomics
Are you searching for Genomics information? There are a lot of choices out there. Perhaps one of the most fun is BlindSearch. Just enter your search term and simultaneously it is searched in the three “big” search engines: Bing, Google and Yahoo (no rank implied, just alphabetically listed). Then you can vote on which search engine is best for that topic. Another search engine I put high on my list, especially when I am talking to young students, is Ask.com. This search engine allows the searcher to type in a natural language question, so it helps formulate the search when the student is not really sure what they are looking for. This is especially useful if it is a question that has been asked many times before. These tools are all fine if you are looking for background information on a specific topic. But what to do if you want to keep current with a topic? You can’t do a new search every day. One suggestion is to set up email “news alerts” or “news updates” from your favourite search engine.