11/25/2023 0 Comments Decode genetics newsI suppose, perhaps, they can take some comfort in knowing what their contribution is worth – some substantial chunk of $415 million (potentially as much as $3,000 per person, though, practically, probably about a quarter to half of that) but only to the last owners of deCODE. And the Icelanders, about 140,000 of them deCODE has said, who volunteered their DNA and health records to deCODE are also not going to see any of that $415 million. So, what reflections? Well, first, looking back, I fear the shareholders who were wiped out in the first deCODE bankruptcy will not see a penny of this week’s $415 million sales price. By the end it is unclear whether deCODEme had any customers. It was charging nearly $1000 for services similar to those 23andMe was providing for under $300 (or less with frequent “sales”). This was not surprising deCODEme never lowered its prices to meet competition from 23andMe. At that point, at least three companies were offering direct to consumer genomic services: deCODEme, 23 and Me, and Navigenics.Īmgen announced that it had no plans to continue deCODEme. The new deCODE also continued deCODEme, a direct to consumer genomics service it had started in late 2007, before the bankruptcy. A “new deCODE” was launched, as a private company (i.e., without publicly traded stock) that continued its gene discovery researc. A few months later, the assets of deCODE were bought by a newly organized company, Saga Investments, that retained Stefansson in management. The shareholders, including many individual Icelanders who bought stock enthusiastically at high prices, were wiped out. The bankruptcy listed assets of just under $70 million and debts of more than $313 million. It had some scientific successes over the next few years, but kept losing money.Ī few years later, company was delisted from NASDAQ and, in November 2009, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Instead, it turned its attention to disease gene discovery the old-fashioned way, collecting DNA and health information voluntarily from Icelanders with family histories of particular diseases. Citing, I suspect disingenuously, an Icelandic court decision against including the records of dead Icelanders in the database, it gave up any idea of spending the hundreds of millions of dollars that database would cost. Based in large part on plans for its use of the Health Sector Database, in June 2000 deCODE made its first public offering, selling shares at over $18 that were quickly bid up to over $30. What happened after my article came out was also interesting. (Unfortunately, the article does not seem to be available on-line. Greely, Iceland’s Plan for Genomics Research: Facts and Implications, 40 Jurimetrics J. I wrote a fairly long article about deCODE through this point and published it in 2000: Henry T. ![]() It also struck an apparently lucrative deal with international pharmaceutical company, Roche.Ĭontrary to what is widely believed, deCODE was not given any special right to collect DNA from Icelanders – just to build a database of their health records that could be used for (presumably lucrative) research purposes. ![]() Many of these shares ended up in the hands of Icelandic banks, other institutions, and individuals. deCODE issued stock privately, both after the legislation passed and again after the license was awarded. In January 2000 the Icelandic government formally awarded the licence to run this Health Sector Database, as expected, to deCODE. The proposal was controversial, leading to the creation of an Icelandic group for research subjects’ rights, Mannvernd, to battle it, but the Icelandic parliament, the Althing (the oldest existing parliament in the world, it claims), passed the proposal in December 1998. ![]() ![]() It made headlines in the late 1990s with its proposal to create a universal health database of Icelanders for research purposes. The notably abrasive (and I’m trying to be nice) Icelandic geneticist Kari Stefansson founded deCODE in 1996, in part to take advantage of Iceland’s small (about 280,000 people), genetic homogenous, and well documented (both for health and for genealogy) population for genetics research. See this article in Genome Web Daily (access requires free registration). biotech giant Amgen announced it was buying DeCODE Genetics for $415 million, thus apparently ending that company’s “interesting” 16 year ride.
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