J. Craig Venter sequenced his DNA over a decade ago in the race to map the first human genome. Now, he's hoping to help consumers sequence and make sense of their own.
Venter's San Diego-based company Human Longevity, Inc. announced on Tuesday the launch of a new service called Health Nucleus. On top of a whole genome sequence, Health Nucleus will provide a battery of scientific tests aiming to match a person's genomic information with their personal health and risk for disease.
"Putting all this data together is a unique experiment," Venter told KPBS. "We're going to find out what works — what's really predictive."
Clients who enroll in Health Nucleus will first go through about eight hours of medical testing at Human Longevity's San Diego office. The routine will include whole genome sequencing, microbiome sequencing, a full-body MRI scan and other tests.
Once all that data is collected, clients will have access to it through an online portal that provides up-to-date information about their personal health risks. In theory, they could bring that information to their doctor and use it to craft new treatment plans or take additional measures to prevent disease.
Venter said the handful of people who've already gone through Health Nucleus have learned a lot they didn't already know.
"We found life-saving information for one of them, a physician who didn't know he had certain traits," Venter says. "So it's going to be very valuable to most individuals that come through."
However, coming through Health Nucleus will not be cheap. Enrolling starts at $25,000, and the "platinum" service tops out at $50,000.
Venter believes insurance companies will eventually cover services like Health Nucleus, though. His goal is to prove genomic data can save money in the long-run through disease prevention. He says the San Diego location is able to process around 10 people per day, and the company has plans to expand to other locations starting in 2016.
Thanks to reductions in the cost of sequencing, researchers know more about the human genome than ever before. But they still need to validate how relevant a lot of that information can be for individual patients.
Human Longevity's chief medical officer Brad Perkins emphasized that at this stage, Health Nucleus is an experimental project.
"The people who join us here in the Health Nucleus will embark on a year-long journey of data analysis and discovery with us," Perkins said. "The outcomes of that process — we hope, we think — will be an opportunity to improve their health through early detection and prevention."
Other San Diego companies have also been seeking to sell genome sequencing directly to customers interested in exploring their health more deeply. Earlier this year, Illumina created a company called Helix to provide customers with "affordable sequencing and database services."
