All about the base: New businesses eye the opportunities in managing genome data
By The Economist,
The Economist
| 06. 25. 2016
The project to understand the human genome has long promised to revolutionise the way that diseases are diagnosed, drugs are designed and even the way that medicine is practised. An ability to interpret human genetic information holds the promise of doing everything from predicting which drugs will work on a particular patient to identifying a person’s predisposition to develop diseases.
Genomic information is already transforming some medical practices. Sequencing has changed the way that fetuses are screened for Down’s syndrome, from a risky invasive test to one where abnormalities in fetal DNA can be picked up from blood drawn from the mother. In time this sort of method will extend to other genetic disorders and other medical applications. One area of promise is treating some types of cancer. Using blood tests to detect genetic changes in tumours could allow doctors to discover more quickly when drugs are no longer effective. This is so promising that there is already speculation that performing such “liquid” biopsies could be a $11 billion business by 2022.
Realising the vast potential of genomic medicine is...
Related Articles
By Alondra Nelson, Science | 09.11.2025
In the United States, the summer of 2025 will be remembered as artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) cruel summer—a season when the unheeded risks and dangers of AI became undeniably clear. Recent months have made visible the stakes of the unchecked use...
By Emma McDonald Kennedy
| 09.25.2025
In the leadup to the 2024 election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to make IVF more accessible. He made the commitment central to his campaign, even referring to himself as the “father of IVF.” In his first month in office, Trump issued an executive order promising to expand IVF access. The order set a 90-day deadline for policy recommendations for “lowering costs and reducing barriers to IVF,” although it didn’t make any substantive reproductive healthcare policy changes.
The response to the...
By Johana Bhuiyan, The Guardian | 09.23.2025
In March 2021, a 25-year-old US citizen was traveling through Chicago’s Midway airport when they were stopped by US border patrol agents. Though charged with no crime, the 25-year-old was subjected to a cheek swab to collect their DNA, which...
By Julie Métraux, Mother Jones | 09.23.2025