You either die worth $6 billion or live long enough to get auctioned off for $256 million.
On May 19, biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals announced that, pending regulatory approvals, it would buy “substantially all” of consumer genetic testing company 23andMe for $256 million.
23andMe peaked at a $6 billion valuation in 2021 but never made a profit. It filed for bankruptcy on March 23 and was put up for auction.
Regeneron said it’s buying 23andMe’s personal genome service along with its total health and research services business lines and its biobank and “associated assets” to grow its “genetics-guided research and drug development,” according to a May 19 press release.
23andMe’s biobank, which contains about 15 million people’s genetic data, is arguably the biggest get. 23andMe’s website says about 80% of its users gave consent for their data to be used for research.
This will add to the Regeneron Genetics Center’s existing bank of nearly 3 million people’s deidentified genetic data. The center uses that data to discover new medicines and guide research.
Due to the 23andMe dataset’s size—and, presumably, diversity—this acquisition has the potential to accelerate personalized medicine and the integration of genomic data into clinical decision-making, Scott Schell, chief medical officer at information technology company Cognizant, told Healthcare Brew.
“I think we’ll look backward at this as a sentinel event, because there’s a huge amount of data here, and it’s not unitary in its disease focus,” Schell said.
Zooming out. Regeneron’s purchase follows 23andMe’s failed attempt to use its data to develop original therapeutics as well as a yearslong agreement starting in 2018 with British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline (now GSK) that gave GSK temporary access to the company’s database for drug research and development.
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The efforts produced one cancer immunotherapy drug from GSK and two other cancer immunotherapy drugs from 23andMe that all entered clinical trials before the company ended its development of new treatments and wound down the trials in November 2024, Stat reported.
Regeneron’s transaction is expected to close in Q3 this year, and the company said in the release it plans to continue 23andMe’s operation as a personal genomics service without pause.
Zooming out. The problem is that, if anything, the bankruptcy seems to have put people more on edge about the company.
After 23andMe, which was headquartered in California, put its assets up for auction, users scrambled to delete their data, concerned over who might end up buying it and how it could be used. California’s attorney general even put out a how-to guide.
“I think all of us—and I don’t think that’s an overly broad statement—who have spent time looking at genetic and molecular diagnostics looked at this 23andMe financial collapse and unwinding with really great concern,” Schell said.
He’s optimistic, though, that Regeneron’s purchase will quell consumer panic.
“I think the concept of bringing this inside of a pharma company really raises that level of trust,” Schell said. “People may opt out, but I don’t think people would be in as large of a panic to rush out knowing that a pharmaceutical company with this infrastructure and regulation is now responsible.”