Harnessing the Code of Life with 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki at Evolve Global Summit 2023

You talked about the data, which is, you know, the world is all about data now and all about trying to leverage new technologies. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you about artificial intelligence and what your thoughts are with regard to how you can use it with this data. But with the other side of it of, yes, it has potential, but what about safety? You know, the UK Biobank, once you opt in and they start using AI, the AI can't unlearn it. So if you decide to opt out, your data is still going to be there. I think that the most, one of the most exciting things I think that is going to come for individuals is the ability to really predict disease and outcomes. So right now, for instance, we can tell you, we can look at our BRCA customers and we can say, let's say over 80% of individuals are, you know, have a lifetime risk of getting it. But what is that opportunity for us to get even better and better at really understanding who is not at risk and who potentially is at risk? And then also understanding what are the environmental factors that you can be in control of to actually really mitigate that risk. So we think about the opportunity of really creating DNA language models, so really being able to understand the genome and how that translates into what your potential risk factors are, how you can best manage your life and how you can actually really have the best health span. So I completely understand there's all kinds of good discussions happening underway in terms of AI safety, completely supportive and involved in those discussions. But I think right now the main area that we have been focused on is I think that there's a lot of potential to really improve people's lives. And I think a lot of people who are suffering, how is it that we can use genetic and health data to really help improve individuals' lives? I'd also like to ask you about data safety in terms of the data breach that happened last month. Where are you on that? And I would imagine for a lot of people of Jewish descent, it's especially concerning given what is happening in the world right now. Yeah, unfortunately, we're pretty limited with what we can say about this right now. I think the main thing that you can get from the announcements that we've put out is the importance of people not reusing passwords. So that is something that 23andMe has been really pushing as we did. We asked all of our customers to reset their password and we are moving forward with mandatory two-factor authentication for all of our customers. So those are the types of main protections that we need is that we recognize that people, it's called credential stuffing, where people can come and they can reuse passwords that were leaked from another site and then go into, try it in other sites. The importance for us of making sure that our customers all have very good password hygiene and that there's two-factor authentication for them. So I've always said 23andMe is all about choice and transparency, and it's also really focused on privacy. So it is critical for us to have an extensive privacy team, an extensive security team where we're constantly monitoring. That said, we've always said there's a theoretical possibility of risks, but we do everything we can to make sure that we're ensuring the privacy and the protection of people's data. At the same time, we do want to give people choice, and I think that's specifically one thing I would say that is different with 23andMe and everyone else is that we give our customers the ability to opt in to, for instance, sharing their DNA with their family, with other individuals, to using your DNA to actually find, you know, fifth cousins, et cetera, so that you can actually piece together a more extensive family tree. And I'd also like to ask you, what is the future for 23andMe? Are you thinking about whether you're going to remain a publicly traded company or, you know, do you think that was, at the end of the day, the right choice? Well, 23andMe went public via SPAC, you know, a couple years ago, really with this intention that 23andMe was a mature therapeutic biotech company, that we had this, an incredibly competent team of individuals who had been doing drug discovery for 15 plus years, that we had an incredible data set to mine, to understand, to see how we could actually move that from discovery into human clinical trials. We had a very supportive and extensive collaboration with GSK, showing that we had over 50 plus programs and we knew that 23andMe had an incredible data set to be able to leverage to really help customers benefit from the human genome and turn those into meaningful therapeutics. So we went public specifically with the intent that we were mature enough to raise capital to continue drug discovery. And I think, obviously, interest rates have really had an impact. I would say that the Inflation Reduction Act has obviously had an impact. So it is not a flourishing time for the biotech industry. It's the third time in my career that I've seen that you have biotech companies that are, you know, really suffering like this, and a number of companies that are trading under cash. So I know that the industry eventually evolves and eventually pulls out of it, but it is definitely a time period where people have to make choices. And 23andMe, obviously, we publicly announced that we had a riff back in July, that we had to cut back on our therapeutics team. We've had to make decisions about what portfolio, you know, portfolio selection, where are we going to emphasize our portfolio, where are we going to put our resources, and really emphasizing partnerships. So I'm happy to be a public company. I think our customers, we have a number of customers who want to be shareholders, but also recognizing that it is an incredibly difficult time for the biotech industry.