How 23andMe plans to harness its massive database to further its ambitions in drug development

Drug development is expensive, can take years to complete and doesn't guarantee a novel therapy for treating disease. But consumer genetic testing company 23andMe is forging ahead to leverage its massive database of genetic data for research and to make and sell its own therapies.

Consumer genetic testing company 23andMe is forging ahead to leverage its massive database of genetic data for research and to make and sell its own therapies. Anne Wojcicki, 23andMe's CEO and co-founder, has often said the company's mission, from the beginning, is to help people "access, understand and benefit from the human genome." Using genetic data based on the company's 12 million genotype customers and billions of phenotypic data points gives 23andMe a distinct competitive advantage for its therapeutics business, Kenneth Hillan, 23andMe’s head of therapeutics, said Thursday during the virtual Fierce JPM Week event. It really is that statistical power, the size and scale of our databases, and using genetics to see things in terms of drug targets within diseases that others just can't see," he said. It's the second cancer drug the company has advanced into human trials, following an immuno-oncology therapy developed through a partnership with pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. It's an expensive endeavor, but with the company going public and with the GSK collaboration, it allows us to carry forward a portfolio and it will allow us to make very data-driven decisions about the programs we continue versus those that we stop. I'm excited about being able to use this data to move with greater agility and more nimbly and more quickly so that ultimately we can get therapies moving forward and into the clinic to test if these have the potential to become medicines that can really help patients," he said.