Gene-Testing Firms Set Sights on Drug Development Companies Race to Gather Large DNA Data Sets in Bid to Find Treatments Based on Genetics

IN FOCUS NEWS says. “And that will only happen if the prob- phenomenon”. But Ramanathan thinks that clearly about the role of humans in climate lem has a strong ethical component.” the huge popularity of the current pope pre- change, says James Bretzke, a Catholic theo- Among the moral arguments for action on sents a unique opportunity to raise awareness. logian at Boston College in Massachusetts. climate change is the idea that society must “Pope Francis has become a Kennedy-like Already, he says, several Vatican figures who preserve Earth for future generations, says figure who goes beyond Catholicism and are likely to be involved in drafting the Pope’s another meeting organizer, climate scientist appeals to the whole world,” he says. encyclical have made unequivocal statements Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Even a popular pope can stir contro- on global warming. Last year, for example, Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Cali- versy, however. Francis’s support for action Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, chancel- fornia. A further argument is that the world’s on climate change lor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, said 3 billion poorest people produce a fraction has raised hackles “I think he will that “essentially all documents published now of humanity’s annual greenhouse-gas emis- among some con- say that there accept as a scientific truth that climate change sions — about 5% — but are predicted to servative Catholics, is a connection is due to human activity”. suffer disproportionately from the impacts such as Steve Moore, between how The document set to be signed at this week’s of climate change, such as more extreme who is chief econo- we treat the meeting contains a very similar statement, weather. mist at the Heritage planet and how according to co-organizer Partha Dasgupta, Francis is not the first major religious Foundation, a free- we treat one an economist at the University of Cambridge, leader — nor even the first pope — to speak market think tank another.” UK. Attendees were scheduled to discuss the out on climate change. In a 2009 statement, in Washington DC. physical and chemical processes that underlie Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams Francis has “allied himself with the far left”, global warming, he says, but a debate on the and other UK religious representatives rec- Moore says. idea that human activities drive that warming ognized a moral imperative to address the But Dan Misleh, executive director of the was not planned. “Religious leaders might ask causes of global warming. And last month, Catholic Climate Covenant, an environmen- whether other scientists have different views,” the presiding bishop of the US Episcopal tal group in Washington DC, says that Francis says Dasgupta, adding that the small minor- Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, described is unlikely to endorse specific policies to fight ity of scientists who are sceptical of climate those who attribute global warming to purely climate change. “I don’t think he is going to change were not represented at the meeting. natural causes as “often driven by greed and say that a carbon tax is preferable to a cap- Still, the Pope will be careful to point out self-centred political interests, and sometimes and-trade programme,” Misleh says. “But I where scientific uncertainties remain, Bretzke by wilful blindness”. think he will say that there is a connection predicts. Such caution is borne of the Vatican’s Closer to home, Francis’s predecessor between how we treat the planet and how we famous over-certainty in the past. “Centuries Benedict XVI made numerous statements treat one another.” ago, the Church got on the wrong end of cos- on the environment, describing climate Such a strategy will allow Francis to avoid mological arguments,” he says. “It has been change in 2011 as a “worrying and complex seeming “ideological” while still speaking chastened by that.” ■

MEDICAL RESEARCH Gene-testing firms set sights on drug development Companies race to gather large DNA data sets in bid to find treatments based on genetics.

BY ERIKA CHECK HAYDEN Many expect the FDA to further expand 23andMe is farther down this road and has the types of medically relevant information already attracted interest from health-care ompanies that offer genetic testing that consumer genetic tests can supply. The firms. In January, it signed a US$60-million directly to consumers are renewing February decision “is a huge step for the field”, deal with California biotechnology company their ambitions. Recent moves by US says Ken Chahine, a senior vice-president at Genentech, which will use genetic data from Cregulators have given the firms fresh hope that Ancestry.com DNA of Provo, Utah, which 23andMe customers to develop therapeutics. the large genetic data sets they amass will have offers genetic testing to the public. “You’re The personal-genomics firm has also hired commercial as well as scientific value, spawn- starting to see others get into this space former Genentech executive Richard Scheller ing diagnostic tests or drugs. because everyone sees a lot of value in it.” to lead an in-house effort to develop drugs. The moment seems ripe. In February, the US Ancestry.com DNA, a subsidiary of And, similar to Ancestry.com, 23andMe has Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed genealogy website Ancestry.com, is one of access to a home-grown social network that 23andMe — a company in Mountain View, those newcomers. The company has so far encourages its customers to interact with the California, that has offered genome analysis to collected DNA from 850,000 customers, which company and each other. consumers for nearly a decade — to begin mar- it uses to help people to find relatives among Commercial firms are not the only group keting a test for mutations that cause a rare dis- members of its genealogy-focused social net- seeking to build large pools of participants ease called Bloom syndrome. This was the first work. It is now exploring the idea of collecting for genetic studies — or the only ones har- time that the agency had approved a genetic test users’ medical histories, too, so that it could nessing social networks for this cause. The marketed to the public, not clinicians — and offer them medically relevant information and medical-research study Genes for Good, companies are betting that it will not be the last. investigate the genetic roots of diseases. which launched on 31 March, is seeking

participants through Facebook. Users of the social-networking service can down- load a Genes for Good app that guides them through a series of health surveys to collect basic information, such as height, weight and whether a person uses tobacco. Users who complete 15 of these surveys can receive a ‘spit kit’ to collect saliva for DNA sequencing, and are encouraged to continue providing health information afterwards. “We wanted to do something that would give us the possibility of capturing very large numbers of people in a way that is more engaging than the traditional types of study,” says Gonçalo Abecasis, a statisti- cal geneticist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor who is leading the study.

WIDENING THE NET DNA from humans who lived in the Andes 9,000 years ago gives clues to how South America was peopled. Drawing on 23andMe’s example, the project will return genetic information ARCHAEOLOGY to users — such as hints about ancestry drawn from a user’s genetic markers. The project also hopes to share the information it collects with other academic scientists, South America or even companies “They’re smart developing new to tether their therapies, after research to a removing identi- settled in one go platform that fying information has a much such as names and broader market addresses. Tests of human remains from a cave high in the Peruvian base of people.” So far, Genes for Andes point to a single early migration. Good has recruited 4,200 potential participants of the 20,000 it seeks, and hundreds of those have already BY EWEN CALLAWAY inhabitants, and of living indigenous people, sent back their spit kits. That is a relatively to represent one continuous population1. small number of genomes compared to the umans settled in South America in In the 1950s and 1960s, Peruvian archaeolo amount of genetic information contained a single wave of migration not long gist Augusto Cardich discovered human in private databases. And it is dwarfed by after their ancestors first crossed from remains bearing the characteristic ancient the amount of data being amassed by public HSiberia into the Western Hemisphere during skull shape in a rock shelter perched high projects, such as one run by the UK Depart- the last ice age, genetic evidence suggests. The in the Andes in a region called Lauricocha. ment of Health that aims to sequence the finding, based on DNA from the remains of Carbon dating put the site at around 9,000 years genomes of 100,000 patients. five ancient humans who lived high in the old, making it a classic archaeological example Such efforts, in theory, could compete for Peruvian Andes, also hints at how ancient of early high-altitude living. Later research- KAPTEYN/ROBERT HARDING CHRISTIAN participants with commercial ventures such Andeans evolved to thrive at altitudes of more ers dated remains from Lauricocha closer to as Ancestry.com DNA and 23andMe, which than 4,000 metres. 5,000 years old, greatly diminishing its appeal ask customers to pay for testing similar to Presented on 16 April at the annual meeting for researchers interested in the early prehistory the type that Genes for Good will offer for of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) of South America. “People simply forgot about free. It is not clear whether that will affect in San Francisco, California, the research sheds this site. Nobody was interested any more,” says the companies’ ability to attract custom- light on the last major continental migration Lars Fehren-Schmitz, a biological anthropolo- ers and expand their data sets, given their in human prehistory — and one of the least gist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. significant head start. understood. More than half a century after the site’s dis- Genes for Good is tapping the power South America’s oldest-known human covery, Fehren-Schmitz’s team got permission of Facebook, with its 1.44 billion active occupation site — the 14,600-year-old Monte to look at five human skeletons excavated from monthly users. Given this potential, the Verde settlement in Chile — suggests that Lauricocha and held at the National Museum project could become more massive than people quickly reached the continent after of the Archaeology, Anthropology and History any previous genetic study, says Michelle crossing the Bering land bridge one or of Peru in Lima. The team redated the remains, Meyer, a bioethicist and legal scholar at the two thousand years earlier, perhaps skirt- remeasured the skulls and extracted DNA. Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai ing the Pacific coast. But some argue for a Their work, presented by Fehren-Schmitz in New York. “They’re smart to tether second migration. They use skeletal evi- at the SAA meeting, paints a complicated their research to a platform that has a dence to propose that the long, narrow picture of Lauricocha. Two of its residents, much broader market base of people than skulls of South Americans living more a woman and a 2-year-old child, died nearly we’re used to seeing in research studies,” than about 5,000 years ago differ too much 9,000 years ago. The third, a man, perished she adds. ■ from the rounder heads of more-recent around 2,500 years later and another man died