The Reboot of Consumer Genomics? with Kian Sadeghi, Nucleus Genomics

There’s a new company in the consumer genomics space that last month released results for the first adopters of its new consumer-facing whole genome product. Nucleus Genomics, founded by Kian Sadeghi, aims to reinvent direct-to-consumer genomic testing with "the consumer reach of 23andMe and the clinical consequence of Myriad Genetics.”

Kian joins us today to talk about his vision for the company and why consumer genomics is still a great idea.“To know that we can potentially give someone an insight that could save their life—that’s so powerful,” he says in today’s show. I’m excited to bring genomics to a wider audience than it’s ever been delivered to.  If you look at 23andMe and the other consumer companies, we’re talking about 14 to 15 million people.  The United States has over 300 million people.  There are hundreds of millions of people who have never done a genetic test.”What does the Nucleus testing process look like?  How is the company determining which variants and PRS scores to return?  What about recent LDT regulation implementation?According to Illumina, which partners with the new company, Nucleus raised 18 million in funding in 2022, largely from Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm, Seven Seven Six, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Kian is just twenty-four years old.  He says he became highly motivated to do something when a teenage cousin died suddenly in her sleep and her doctors attributed it to long QT syndrome.   “Hundreds of millions of people in the United States are carriers for a DNA variant that they do not know about.  There’s a narrative that consumer genetics is dying, but less than .001% of the population has done a whole genome test,” he says.  “There’s so much to build here."

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