Faced with a significant drop in DNA Review sales, 23andMe is laying off 100 employees

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23andMe, a start-up specializing in recreational DNA testing at health home, is in the process of laying off 100 employees, according to an article of CNBC published on January 23, 2020. Anne Wojcicki, founder and CEO of the start-up, justifies this 14% reduction in the company's workforce by lowering its sales of DNA Review kits. She said to herself "surprise"by this decline and asserts that the market"is not ready to go further" for the time being.

A marked decline in 2019

Still, 23andMe's financial health seemed to be looking good. The company recently raised $ 786 million to recruit more and increase the signing of partnerships with major pharmaceutical groups.

After a chaotic start because of its relationship with the Food and Drug Administration, the Californian start-up really took off in 2015, during which time it employed more than 700 people. But sales of kits began to plummet in 2019. A trend that has affected the recreational genetics sector more widely. In the summer of 2019, Francis DeSouza, director of Illumina, a DNA sequencer manufacturer which counts 23andMe among its customers, warned that its sales were largely in decline.

The importance of confidentiality

For Anne Wojcicki, the main reason for this bad patch is the awareness by the public of the importance of the protection of personal data. She cites the Golden State Killer case, in which a Californian serial killer was identified through genetic information freely available from a genealogy website. It must be said that DNA is not a data like any other: genetic information is absolutely unique and can reveal a lot about an individual.

For the CEO, "confidentiality is a priority"She announces that her company has just recruited a new security chief, who is the former director of Okta, a company specializing in single access management via the cloud."I think the tech world needs to take ownership of these privacy standards to build trust"She continues. A well-crafted speech that ignores the recent scandal that affected the company.

23andMe resells the genetic information of its customers

On January 10, 2020, we learned that the Californian start-up had sold the rights to a new drug – developed thanks to the genetic data of its users – to a Spanish pharmaceutical company, Almirall SA. The drug should produce antibodies to block proteins responsible for autoimmune diseases. A similar operation was carried out in August 2018 when 23andMe sold all of its data to the pharmaceutical laboratory Glaxosmithkline. In order to defend itself, the start-up then claimed that all the data had been anonymized and that the persons concerned had given their consent. Repeated scandals that prompted the Pentagon at the end of December 2019 to ban its members from using these recreational tests.

These are just statistics

Anne Wojcicki omits an argument which could also explain the drop in sales: the awareness of the lack of scientific reliability of these tests. Note that the results linked to geographic origins (the company's flagship product) are only statistics with a margin of error. In addition, the databases used are necessarily biased because they only rely on declarative. Even more worrying, these tests claim to be able to determine the genetic predispositions of clients to a dozen diseases … but they can only detect a risk of developing one of the pathologies sought. This does not mean, however, that this risk will actually be expressed because environmental factors are not taken into account.

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