Veritas, a spinoff of Harvard University’s Personal Genome Project, specializes in inexpensive “whole genome” sequencing using the latest speedy DNA technology. For $999, it has since last year offered adults in the U.S. the chance to learn the sequence of the six billion DNA letters in their cells. A doctor must order that test. Gene knowledge can be critically useful to anyone who’s facing an undiagnosed disease or whose DNA harbors a cancer risk. But for most people the readout is little more than a novelty. Consumer demand for genome scans remains tepid. Veritas, which already operates a sequencing lab in China, nevertheless appears to be betting that newborn sequencing could become a must-have product for ambitious parents there. In an interview, Mirza Cifric, CEO of Veritas, declined to provide a timeline for launching a similar service in the U.S. While a few doctors here have begun sequencing newborns with unexplained illnesses, American medical bodies have opposed sequencing healthy babies because most of the data doesn’t lead to clear actions doctors can take. Robert Green, a genetics professor at Harvard University, co-leads a federally funded study called BabySeq that looks at the risks and benefits of sequencing newborns; it has sequenced the genomes of about 100 of them so far. Green reported in October than less than 10 percent of about 2,400 couples offered full-genome sequencing of their children were interested. “Some families really don’t want anything to do with this. The idea of finding a risk in their beautiful baby of something that might or might not happen is terrifying or repugnant,” he says. “But other types of people are information seekers.” In a significant boost for Veritas, Green says he recently agreed to become a paid medical and scientific advisor to the company. He does not believe that the baby sequencing test will be accepted in the U.S. for the time being. But other companies are eyeing more limited DNA gene tests for babies as a way to expand on the neonatal screening routinely done in hospitals today. In that process, a doctor pricks a newborn’s heel and collects a drop of blood. The sample is then subjected to conventional tests to flag about six to 30 diseases, depending on the county or state, which can all be easily treated if caught early. One U.S. company, BabyGenes, already offers a DNA panel that tests for about 100 genes and 70 conditions, including many rare ones not on government tests. “We’re trying to get word out there that there is a better way,” says the company’s laboratory manager, Katie Morris. By deciphering a baby’s entire genome, the Veritas test will go still further. The selection of 950 disease risks it will tell parents about originates with a list assembled by Green’s BabySeq project. But Veritas will not reveal everything, in recognition that not all the information in the genome is appropriate to give parents right away. For instance, it won’t tell them about a gene that can strongly predispose people to Alzheimer’s in old age. Instead, Veritas says, it will retain the rest of a newborn’s genome data and let parents purchase further information at a later date. That pay-as-you-go business concept was first introduced by a U.S. company called Helix, but it has yet to prove clearly successful (see “10 Breakthrough Technologies 2016: DNA App Store”). In the U.S., Veritas has received some poor reviews from customers who faced months-long delays in receiving their reports. Cifric says there were delays with some people’s orders but that customers are now getting their genomes. To catch the same high-risk conditions that newborn screening tests do, experts say, the Veritas genome reports will have to be delivered in just a few days.
Boston-based DNA sequencing firm Veritas Genetics has introduced a service that decodes the genome of Chinese babies. The test, called myBabyGenome, can identify in advance 950 serious early- and later-life health risks, 200 genes linked to drug responses, as well as over 100 physical and behavioural characteristics, from baldness to a tendency to overeat, according to Veritas. The $1,200 test has been criticised by some experts. It runs the risk of "predestination based on bad science", said Jim Evans, professor of genetics at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Veritas has said it would only release "appropriate" information and participating parents could buy more data at a later stage.