Sequenom sees big market in prenatal testing for autism, other conditions
November 20th, 2008From CNN Money:
San Diego-based Sequenom, Inc. is best known for a prenatal test designed to detect Down syndrome, but its chief executive said this week that the company sees an even bigger opportunity in genetic testing for inherited diseases like autism, heart ailments, cystic fibrosis and birth defects.
Speaking at the annual Lazard Capital Markets health care conference, Harry Stylli said the market for testing for prenatal chromosomal disorders like Down syndrome could be $3 billion to $5 billion worldwide, but he expected the market for the other disorders to be bigger.
They would be detected through testing for tiny variations in the genetic code called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or “snips.” Stylli said that about 6 percent of all babies have a birth defect, and 30 percent of those are due to an inherited condition.
“There are many other things that you’d like to be able to test for,” Charles Cantor, Sequenom’s chief scientific officer, said in a telephone interview. “Down’s is the single most common fetal defect, but it’s the tip of the iceberg.”
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November 21st, 2008 at 11:16 pm
The only brighter side of this scary notion is that perhaps, if this sort of testing is expanded, more people will look at it with increased scrutiny. It is “easy” to push one group of people aside, but a lot more people are touched by autism and “other conditions” than by Down syndrome, so perhaps it will become harder to ignore the ethical implications of this sort of testing.
November 21st, 2008 at 1:48 pm
This is truly scary….designer babies for all. I wish that Harry and Charles of Sequenom, Inc. could just spend a little bit of time with some of the “birth defects” that they wish to profit off the extinction of….Perhaps they could develop a prenatal test to detect orphans and widows as well.