It was a bold prediction, even at a time when technology evolves with blinding speed:
Getting your genome sequenced will soon become as common as dropping by a doctor’s office for a blood test.
The forecast was made Tuesday by three men who have money riding on the outcome: La Jolla geneticist J. Craig Venter, New Jersey stem cell pioneer Dr. Robert Hariri and Peter Diamandis of Los Angeles, founder of the X-Prize Foundation.
They gathered in Venter’s seaside office to announce that they had founded Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), which they say will quickly become the largest genome sequencing company in the world, surpassing even China’s well-known Beijing Genomics Institute.
Venter said that HLI will begin by sequencing 40,000 genomes a year, then push production to 100,000. The work will be done with cutting edge technology from San Diego’s Illumina, which has helped to slash the time and cost of sequencing people’s genomes.
Venter and other scientists believe that sequencing the genomes of hundreds of thousands of people will clearly reveal which genes cause disease and illness, leading to better diagnostics and treatment. HLI also will analyze a person’s microbes and metabolites, providing doctors with a more comprehensive picture of the patients they treat.
The goal: Enable people to live longer, healthier lives.
“100 will become the new 60,” Diamandis said in a moment of exuberance.
The remark came as all three men paused to discussion the future of genomic medicine with U-T San Diego.
J. CRAIG VENTER, geneticist, and founder of J. Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla
Q: You described this undertaking as a shot across the bow of U.S. medicine. What do you mean?
A: It’s time for medicine to change from the way it has evolved over a century or more to becoming fact-based and information drive. Sequencing should be the starting point for everyone. Right now, medicine is practiced by using information that represents the average for a population. That average doesn’t say anything about you, it doesn’t say anything about me. We need to focus on the individual, and we can do that by bringing together the huge information in your genome, your microbes, and in your metabolism.
Q: You spoke about sequencing becoming as common as a urinalysis or a blood sample. Is that something that will happen soon?
A: Well, we’re going to make it soon in San Diego. I don’t know how fast it will get adopted broadly across medicine. The cost of sequencing still has to come down.
Q: Are you saying that you want all new patients at UC San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center to undergo whole genome sequencing?
A: That is the intention. We are going to start a new paradigm by offering it to everyone to comes to Moores. We want their complete genome, just just what’s routinely used in many places right now, where they amplify only a few genes. If the patient has a tumor, we want to sequence that, too.
Q: Do you think the public is going to be able to absorb this kind of information?
A: Well, it is a lot of absorb. But it is incredible information to have. Knowledge is power. The genome will give people power across the board as we make more discoveries. It is probably the most democratic way for people to have control over their own medical outcomes.
Q: You have looked at your own predisposition to Alzheimer’s disease. What did you find?
A: Amyloid plaques build up in your brain when you have Alzheimer’s disease. I had an extensive analysis done of my brain and there are zero amyloid plaques, which means that for the next 20 years I’m not going to have a problem with it. It shows that there’s a difference between what we know about genetic risk, based on the limited studies that are done, and the actual clinical outcomes.
Obviously, I have genes that are protecting me from getting Alzheimer’s disease. I knew that a little because there’s no history of Alzheimer’s in my family. So we want to find those protective genes — they’ll become new drug targets, new diagnostic targets. The economic impact of Alzheimer’s disease for the future of this country is huge.
Q: When you learned about your genetic predispostion, did it have an impact on you?
A: It made me pay a whole lot more attention to Alzheimer’s disease research, to preventive measures. The neurologists here in San Diego thought that the genetic predisposition was very predictive, and they were stunned when we learned that I had no indications of having the amyloid plaques.
Knowing the right answers can be liberating.
Q: You’ve been involved in so many initiatives in your life. How much does this rev your engine? How does it compare to what you were doing when you were 35, 40.
A: This is the ultimate outcome of what we started to do with the first sequencing of the genome. This is where I wanted it to get to. If you recall, I was saying back then the genome race was actually a race to the starting line. We’re now actually at that starting line, and ready to go.
DR. ROBERT HARIRI, neurosurgeon and stem cell pioneer. Founder of the cord blood bank now known as LifebankUSA
Q: Dr. Venter talked about making sequencing as common as a urinalysis or a blood panel. How far away are we from being able to do that?
A: Craig pointed out that in the past 10 years the cost of sequencing a genome has gone from $100 million to $1,000. Moore’s Law predicts that sequencing will end up becoming about the cost of the full blood panel that you get during any initial physician screening.
What’s unique about our approach is that we are saying, ‘Look, gathering genomic sequencing information is only useful if you do it with exceptional data collection around phenotype. What are the physical, biological, and chemical characteristics that you can associate to that sequence, to that code? Once that’s in place, I guarantee that there will be apps on smartphones that will let people know their genome, their metabolome, their microbiome. They’ll use this to decide what foods to eat or control things like irritable bowel syndrome or Chrohn’s diease. You’re going to be surprised by how fast it all happens. I guarantee it will happen in the next 10 years, probably within the next five … I would argue that this could become the new alternative for physical exam.
Q: Let’s talk about the technological leap here …
A: Our colleagues at Illumina have done a spectacular job in developing the technology, the hardware. I was astounded by how compact and efficient (the sequencing machines) are. What we have on the lab bench today is going to be a dinosaur. There’s no doubt that the smartphone will eventually be the size of a sequencer. We’re moving in that direction.
PETER DIAMANDIS, entrepreneur, engineer, founder of the X Prize Foundation
Q: You’re talking about sequencing everybody …
A: We are in the midst of an explosion of exponential technologies. Entrepreneurs today have access to near-infinite computing. Your cell phone is a supercomputer compared to just 20 years ago. We now have the ability to collect, transmit and save vast amounts of data, and then process it. Memory is now effectively free. The bandwidth we have will let us manipulate that data around the world. That, combined with extraordinary breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence, allows us to examine the vast amount of data and extract useful information out of it. Combine that with genome sequencing and stem cell/-cellular therapeutics, and the ability to rewrite the genetic code and we have the ability significantly impact disease and human longevity.
As a small example, Craig has found that, as we age, errors accumulate in our endogenous stem cell population. These errors, over time, make stem cells less and less effective in repairing and regenerating. Imagine now that we can use synthetic genomic techniques to repair your stem cells and bring them back to their youthful state, and then inject them back into your system. You are effectively re-energizing your regenerative engine.
This is an epic time to be alive. When you look at how we can apply all of these exponential technologies, we are finally able to begin addressing many of today’s grand challenges, such as food, energy, water, literacy, health care, and as part of that, healthy human aging.
Another important point to make is that we are also constantly resetting our expectations. A century ago if you lived over the age of 50 you were lucky. The average human lifespan at the turn of the 1900’s was 45-to-50 years old. It’s now well over 70 and in some places even 80. We have the people in their mid-80s coming down with Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. It’s an epidemic because we have extended human life to the point where these things start showing up. Now the question is can we continue to increase human aging? The answer is yes, but we need to make sure we are living a higher quality of older life. My shorthand for this is to say that our goal is to make 100 years old the new 60. There’s no reason why we can’t see 100, with people being vibrant and healthy.
Q: How old are you?
A: I’m 52. I’m the youngest of the three founders and I’m happy that my other two co-founders will be forced to solve these challenges before I run into them. (Laughs.)
Q: People will hear that – 100 is the new 60 – but is that likely to occur in your lifetime?
A: Without question. We are on the verge of unlocking a lot of the fundamentals of why we get cancer, of why we get Alzheimer’s, why we get heart disease. And not only why, but how you prevent them. Those are the three horsem*n of mortality right now. If you don’t die from cardiac conditions you die from cancer. If you don’t die from cancer you die from Alzheimer’s. Addressing those three are important. But the next important objective is to assure that you live well into your 80’s 90’s and 100’s. Having a quality of life will mean that you think great, move great and look great.
OTHER VOICES
Q: Do you think that sequencing people’s entire genome will become as common as a blood test is today?
CINNAMON BLOSS, director of social sciences and bioethics at the Scripps Translational Science Institute in La Jolla.
“If (Human Longevity) achieves the numbers it is going for, and if it proves to be cost effective and leads to better treatments, this could be a catalyst for sequencing to become common.”
IVOR ROYSTON, oncologist and San Diego biotech expert
“Absolutely — in cancer first, then other diseases. I think the cost will drop to $500 in a few years.”
U-T reporter Bradley Fikes contributed to this story.
