Linda Avey, one of the two founders of personal genomics company 23andMe, is leaving the startup to start a new foundation dedicated to studying Alzheimer’s disease. Avey, who has been with the company for over three years, writes that the new foundation will make use of 23andMe’s research platform to “drive the formation of the world’s largest community of individuals with a family history of Alzheimer’s, empower them with their genetic information and track their brain health using state-of-the-art tools”.
Avey notes that the foundation will be starting with the connection between Alzheimer’s and ApoE4, which helps in the breakdown of peptide plaques associated with the disease. The decision seems to be driven in part by personal reasons, as Avey’s father-in-law suffered from Alzheimer’s.
Avey sent the following Email to the 23andMe team:
Dear all-
As I trust you all know, 23andMe is very special to me. I also recognize that the company has reached a critical point in its growth where new leadership can take it to the successful heights we all think it can achieve.
I’ve decided that I’d like to focus my efforts on an area that is personally significant and will continue to have a huge impact on our healthcare system–Alzheimer’s disease. Effective today, I’m leaving 23andMe and have begun making plans for the creation of a foundation dedicated to the study of this disorder. The foundation will leverage the research platform we’ve built at 23andMe–the goal is to drive the formation of the world’s largest community of individuals with a family history of Alzheimer’s, empower them with their genetic information and track their brain health using state-of-the-art tools. We’ve always planned to include Alzheimer’s in our 23andWe research mission…I’m just approaching it from a new angle.
Some of you might be aware that my father-in-law suffered from Alzheimer’s and passed away last year. For this reason, Randy and I are motivated to do what we can to improve the understanding of what leads to the debilitating symptoms and what might prevent them from starting in the first place. The ApoE4 association is barely understood but gives us a great starting point.
I’ll miss working with you but will be excited to hear about the progress I know you’ll be making!
All the best,
Linda
Anne Wojcicki, who founded the company with Avey and is also noted for being Sergey Brin’s wife, sent out the following letter.
Team:
As Linda has told you, she will be leaving 23andMe to focus her energy on transforming Alzheimer’s research and treatment, leveraging the 23andMe platform. While I am quite sad to see her leave I am excited and hopeful as she takes on this mission. As Linda’s co-founder and partner over the last three years, it has been clear that revolutionizing research has been a primary passion. Our drive to change health care has always had roots in our personal lives and we have tried to structure 23andMe so that any individual or organization could actively participate in research. Linda and I have talked about doing research in Alzheimer’s since the inception of the company and the need for the Alzheimer’s community to have a strong leader. With Linda’s involvement, I believe that the APOE4 community could be the first asymptomatic community to successfully develop preventative treatments. I hope that going forward we’ll both be able to shake up and transform the health care space, making health care and treatments better for all.
Linda’s departure is also a sign of 23andMe’s maturation. When we started the company, the personal genetics industry did not exist; now it is a thriving and competitive landscape. Our company has grown and we continue to be an innovative industry leader. While our success has been exceptional, it is also clear we have a lot of work ahead. We have created a significant and empowering tool, but we must find new and better ways to promote the value of knowing your DNA. In the weeks ahead, we will outline a strategy for the company that we believe will make genetics a routine part of health care and will lead us to making significant research discoveries.
Linda has been instrumental in making 23andMe what it is today and we thank her for her passion and dedication to the company. We have many exciting opportunities before us, and I look forward to working with all of you to make 23andMe a spectacular success.
Anne
Worth pointing out is Wojcicki’s statement that 23andMe needs to find “better ways to promote the value of knowing your DNA”. That may be tricky — while there are some traits that are well understood, this is a field that is still in its infancy and the relationships between our genes and most traits are murky. At some point personal genomics will play a key role in our health care system, but I’m not sure we’re there yet.
noone cares about this noname company that has nothing to do with internet technology
You have got to be kidding me. Take a step outside your box.
im not kidding. I’m also following more people than you’ve ever made eye contact with in your life
+1: You sir, have made me laugh the hardest out loud all week. I like your humor.
yep, who cares about 23andme. only reason for coverage is that the cofounder is married to a google cofounder
http://www.time...healthsci-yahoo
This was published a day after your comment (yesterday). This is why people should care about 23andMe in the Alzheimer’s world.
my friends friend from grad at cal interviewed here….he got a job but left with a few weeks…he saw the writing on the wall…that was last year…the ship is sinking and not even goog can save it now
lance lee
my dna is on the internet
Best of luck to her. The expected increase in cases of Alzhiemers as baby boomers age will place an enormous, crushing burden on society (There’s a PBS documentary worth watching). In addition to the healthcare costs, merely look into the eyes of any caregiver.
There’s the stress of caring for the individual, the constant concern about long term care/finances, the guilt of not being able to do more , and the dread about what may be in caregiver’s own future if the patient is a parent. And there’s the enduring deep sorrow throughout the entire long goodbye. I wish her luck and success.
One of the hardest things I’ve gone through in my life (albeit short) was watching a very close family member’s truly-brilliant mind wilt, helplessly, due to Alzheimer’s.
It’s amazing how little is known on how to actually combat the disease. There are plenty of medications to mildly “slow” it, but in the end, none can stop it or reverse it. The best route to any sort of cure is through understanding, and it sound like what this fork of 23andMe is after.
This is heartwarming news in my books. Go Linda. I’m sure you’ve got lots of families behind you.
“…and *that* *sounds* like…”
Typing lapse… my bad.
oh come on now, if research addresses alzheimers, its almost certainly going to come from big government (NIH, federal research grants etc). the chances of some y-combinator type startup producing history-changing medical technology is practically zero
awesoem!
the rats are fleeing the sinking ship. this is total spin. my guess is that she is leaving because the company is failing.
Stupid people ruled by emotions. Tomorrow she’ll join some other cause someone close to her suffers from that cause.
Finish what you started.
oh its finished
Touche!
ha. translate the doc: “dear team, its only a matter of time before our sugar daddy at google pulls the plug on this waste of space, leaving now before the tears start”
were it not for the google connection, we wouldn’t care about 23andme and it arguably wouldn’t even exist. there was very little here other than some snake-oil hitched to the wagon of “consumer-genetics”…and indeed they were forced to admit that it was in fact little more than medical infotainment by the state of california…the day that smack-down happened was the day this thing should have folded.
what do people who work there do all day? it must be fun to sit around and piss away some of that goog money
“…this is a field that is still in its infancy and the relationships between our genes and most traits are murky.” Well said. I speak as a researcher in evolutionary genetics and genomics. Functional genomics is farther advanced in humans than in any other organism except maybe E. coli, but it still has a terribly long way to go. I’d be uneasy dispensing medical advice on the basis of the data currently available to 23andMe, Navigenics, etc.
i wouldn’t like to believe that 23andme is dying or else i wasted too much money on them. I ‘d like to think she’s leaving simply because alzheimer’s research gets a lot more funding than recreational genetics
By leaving, obviously she’s the smarter one.
Best if luck ! Hope you achieve everything as per the plan. Have a Good day
genetic mapping of traits is great for academic papers… not so great as an investment. 23andme is hype
i think its a great effort this field need attention and lots of investment
Some science added to superficial comments.
Nobody denies the crushing burden of Alz – both personally, for the family and society at large. Likewise, it is known that the APOE É›4 interrogation is one of the most solid indication for a predilection for this dreaded condition:
–
Neuron, Volume 54, Issue 5, 713-720, 7 June 2007
Reiman et al. (with Dietrich Stephan as senior author)
The apolipoprotein E (APOE) É›4 allele is the best established genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD). We conducted genome-wide surveys of 502,627 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) to characterize and confirm other LOAD susceptibility genes. In É›4 carriers from neuropathologically verified discovery, neuropathologically verified replication, and clinically characterized replication cohorts of 1411 cases and controls, LOAD was associated with six SNPs from the GRB-associated binding protein 2 (GAB2) gene and a common haplotype encompassing the entire GAB2 gene. SNP rs2373115 (p = 9 1011) was associated with an odds ratio of 4.06 (confidence interval 2.8114.69), which interacts with APOE É›4 to further modify risk. GAB2 was overexpressed in pathologically vulnerable neurons; the Gab2 protein was detected in neurons, tangle-bearing neurons, and dystrophic neuritis; and interference with GAB2 gene expression increased tau phosphorylation.Our findings suggest that GAB2 modifies LOAD risk in APOE É›4 carriers and influences Alzheimer’s neuropathology. [etc]
–
For someone who is familiar both with the ravage of Alz on a personal basis and knows that a hyperescalating community is affected by “APOE Alerts” it is utterly compelling what people could and should do during the decades of flags raised early, with a possible onset several decades later.
23andMe established the Direct-to-Customer business of genome-based proclivity-estimation for a slew of syndromes (now over 116) – and an entire industry is taking off; naturally not without setbacks and expected naysayers.
There are several avenues of progress from the historical initiation of the genome-testing industry.
1) All agree that estimation of proclivity of myriads of genomic conditions is its infancy (before a solid understanding of genome regulation) – and that some structural variants, e.g. premature stop codon mutations, that result in truncated essential proteins can be flagged with much higher confidence compared to complex syndromes (most notably, cancers, obesity, etc) where thousands of genomic- as well as epigenomic factors may contribute to an eventual disease – or its prevention. Thus, one may stick with the guns of an emerging industry.
2) More and more people realize that the loop of DTC model is not yet completely closed. Individuals who turn directly to genome testing may be left with results of interrogation that is usually difficult to interpret – and a practical agenda for attempting to prevent or delay onset of syndromes is rather infrequent.
Linda Avey deserves enormous credit as one of two co-Founders of a pioneer company (shortly after DeCodeMe) – and much admiration for taking what appears a very logical and much needed continuation along path 2.
Go Linda, Go !
It’s a fresh field and in this field there are a lot of chances.
There is already a wonderful non profit research organization that raises money to fund research grants at our country’s brain institutes and medical schools for serious mental health diseases: NARSAD.
http://www.narsad.org. NARSAD has funded many Alzheimer’s research grants. I wish she would put her efforts into an organization already set up with a good track record and who has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over its history. If anyone has a family member, or friend with serious mental illness and would like to be part of the NARSAD community in Los Angeloes, please feel free to contact me via e-mail. Sincerely, Cookie Lewis, M.S.L.S. Askinfomania
If things were going great at 23andMe she wouldn’t be leaving and they wouldn’t have tried to bury the story by announcing it during Labor Day weekend…..