The race for more data is dominating the wellness industry. More people are tracking their sleep, monitoring their glucose levels, and analyzing their step count as a way to optimize, or even gamify, their health. Now, even more data is available to assess how your genetics match up with your partner.
Last week, the five-year-old startup Nucleus Genomics launched a genetic matching feature— “multiplayer mode”—so future parents can assess how their DNA aligns, and their combined risk for passing on a range of conditions.
“We look at a couple’s DNA, and we calculate their risk of passing down over 900 different conditions to their children,” 25-year-old founder and CEO Kian Sadeghi tells Fortune in an exclusive interview about the announcement. “We really believe in building tools that let people have agency over their health and over that of their family as well. We’re really uncovering these sort of invisible risks.”
The company, which has a team of genetic experts on staff, was founded by Sadeghi who dropped out of college to launch the startup in honor of his cousin who, as a teenager, died in her sleep from a genetic condition she didn’t know she had.
“Most physician-ordered genetic tests stop at conditions where there’s a family history, or that are more prevalent,” Sadeghi says. “These miss critical variants that parents could pass down to their children because parents or doctors have to choose what they want to see, at a stage when you usually don’t know what to look for.”
With the new partner matching test, Sadeghi isn’t insinuating that he is breaking up couples if their genetics don’t perfectly align. “As a parent, you really should have the choice and information ahead of time. Decide what you want to do, because to me, it’s all about individual liberty. It’s all about choice. It’s up to the couple,” he says, adding that with more information, couples may make other reproductive decisions. “That’s what we’re really all about. We’re about enabling and empowering families with information. We’re not about circumventing or stopping families.”
The company, which raised $14 million in series A funding this year, is an “outlier” in the field, says Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical who is not associated with the company. Gusev views Nucleus as an offering that does genetic predictions, like 23AndMe, and includes rare disease screenings (usually a company offers one or the other). “What 23andMe was doing was sequencing a sample of the genome, which included some known, rare variant disease mutations, but not all of them,” he says. “Whereas a whole genome platform gets you every single mutation that an individual carries. The genomic data is the superset of everything you can use, and it’s now not that expensive anymore.”
However, while “rare disease screening is of real clinical importance,” Gusev says partner matching and prediction tests are not.
“Most people are screening whether they themselves [are at risk] because they can go and do something about it,” he tells Fortune. “This idea of partner screening before even having kids is relatively new and is not a use that has been offered. We are many steps away from where this is real and actionable.”
Gusev adds that it’s not clear whether a future child could inherit the gene they are predisposed to and, if they did at some time years down the road, there could be new treatments that improve someone’s outcomes. “The further you move the measurement away from the reality, from when it actually is an individual, the more complexities creep into that decision and can modify the eventual outcome,” he says.
Nucleus does not predict phenotypes (observable traits), but does include IQ predictions in their list of conditions tested, which Gusev says is more concerning. “It echoes concerns about eugenics. Screening going beyond disease to screen for the type of person, the type of child you want from a personality perspective can have serious ramifications for our society,” he says.
The company’s site says that “researchers are still in the early stages of understanding how genetics impacts IQ.” While Sadeghi says the technology used will only get more robust, he adds, “We don’t currently provide predictions for future babies on anything outside of hereditary disease.”
“Preconception testing is pretty standard of care … we stand for using technology to empower couples,” Sadeghi tells Fortune when asked about the concern of eugenics. “It has nothing to do with eugenics … When the public understands genetic medicine as a proxy for eugenics, everyone loses.”
Despite Sadeghi saying phenotype reporting is not part of the process, TechCrunch reported that Neurolink Genomics investor and Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov shared that there could be “phenotype reporting” in the future as more people use the model and it gets more accurate.
When asked by the TechCrunch reporter if phenotype matching was a function of modern day eugenics, Asparouhov made a joke, “miming the same hand motion that Elon Musk performed following President Trump’s inauguration” and said “My heart goes out to you.”
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When Fortune asked Sadeghi about Asparouhov’s comments and gesture, he said “I personally wasn’t in and cannot comment on what was said or alluded to. Regardless, we do not agree with any comments likening genetic tests to eugenics or any of its implications … We stand for expanding access to technology and information, and in turn, empowering people to make their own decisions about their own health and that of their family.”
Nucleus’ general offering includes an individual swab test for $399 and claims to give users genetic risk assessments on over 900 conditions, including cancer, heart disease, cognition, and focus. For example, your age and genetic information may indicate your risk for a heart condition is higher than average. In addition to the cost of the test, members can pay an additional $99 fee for hour sessions with a genetic counselor.
As genetic testing becomes more popular and companies like 23andMe have come under fire for data privacy violations, Sadeghi also says his customer’s health data isn’t shared with third parties and that the company is HIPPA compliant with all samples analyzed in a U.S. laboratory.
“It’s like going to your doctor’s office,” he says.
