World Pregnancy will change radically, predicts Noor Siddiqui. “I think that the default way to decide to have children through IVF and the embryo screening,” she said at the wire health summit last week. “There is only a mass amount of risk you can download from the table.”
Siddiqui is the founder and executive director of orchid, a biotechnical company that offers the embryo screening for the entire genome for IVF. By analyzing DNA different embryo before choosing, Orchid will be imposed, parents can reduce the risk that their children grow up are in terms of terms with genetic basis. Siddiqui talked to George Church Pioneer in Genoemic and Professor Genetics at Harvard Medical School in Boston, exploring the promise and potential of sequencing throughout the genome.
It is estimated that 4 percent of people around the world have a disease caused by one genetic mutation. With the embryo projection “these monogenic diseases can only be completely avoided,” Siddiqui said. On top of that, about half of the world’s population suffers from a chronic disease with at least a genetic basis. Analyze five embryos in front of implanting, said Siddiqui, and “You can now alleviate the genetic component of this risk in this two-digit numbers. Speaking in the worst case 30 percent and in the best of 80 percent.” (You can watch the session in the video below; there is a problem at the beginning with the MIC NOOR SIDDIQUI which is fixed for about 6 minutes.)
Orchid’s website, which references the statistical analysis of how much risk reduction can be achieved through embryos, explains that the exact reduction in relative risk will depend on a series of factors. Among other things, the disease includes the disease, the number of objections analyzes and how many influences on genetic variants are shown on the probabilities of disease development.
The church is an investor in orchid and believes that the type of embryo screening offered among the most cost-effective medical technologies ever created. The project of the human genome, the first effort to map all human genes, cost $ 3 billion, but since then the cost of sequencing the genoma fell dramatically. Orchid’s sequencing of the entire genome costs several thousand dollars per embryos. It is “perhaps 10-folding return of investment,” the church believes. “A large part of our health costs, psychological problems and family issues could be resolved by this method.”
Siddiqui used technology to display their own embryos. She shared the story of his mother, who experienced adult blindness as a result of the genetic variation in his genome. “Fortunately, all embryos are negative for it,” she said. “But another thing that is quite common in most Asian families is an incredible high risk for heart disease and diabetes. So it is a really other thing we are prioritized.”
The blindness described by Siddiqui is monogenous, which means that it caused only one genetic variation. Unique diseases that are known, “95 percent there is no treatment, much less healing,” Siddiqui said. But many other conditions – like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder or heart disease – are polygen, guided by the cumulative influence of many genetic variants. For these genetic risk results, they can quantify the risk of potential disease development, and they can be calculated for adults and embryos. Orchid embryonic tests are looking for both types of diseases.
