‘Absolutely’ a future where everyone's DNA sequenced at birth: 23andMe CEO

23andMe Co-Founder & CEO Anne Wojcicki joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss the future of personal genomics.

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- Is it the case though that say, just the core DNA home testing part maybe has slowed down the growth there, as it gets more saturated? And of course, that's why in part why you're looking to grow in these areas you just discussed, right?

ANNE WOJCICKI: Well, it's interesting. There was a time period where it was absolutely raining ancestry kits. And there was an explosion of everyone. It was on like "Saturday Night Live", it was on-- celebrities were dressing up like 23andMe kits. It was just-- we really hit a cultural moment where people start talking about their ancestry. It was a whole new way of thinking about identity.

And one thing I look at is even in this recent census, and there was some other reports out there about how people-- there was this radical jump in the number of people who identify as being multiracial and a lot of that was attributed to coming from genetic testing. So I think there was absolutely an explosion there. I think at the same time, we did get hit by things like Cambridge Analytica and the questions on privacy and there were all kinds of reports out-- oh, and Golden State Killer. There was all kinds of questions about just exactly where is your data going. And I think that there was a very natural slowdown just across the board, of everyone taking a step back and saying, I want to understand.

That said, we've seen a lot of recovery. Frankly, things like COVID have really reignited people's interest in health. And we have always, like one thing that we have always done research on, the health market is far larger than the ancestry testing market. And so there is a huge-- again, thinking back also just what I started talking about with what Francis Collins said, that statement about the opportunity for really changing all of care. All the ways that you predict, prevent, and treat human disease. All that opportunity is there and it's just a matter of time before that becomes a reality.

I think if you ask any medical professional, everyone says there's absolutely a world where everyone is sequenced at birth. But the path to get from today to that moment in time, is undefined. And frankly, that's one of the things that 23andMe is doing, is we are actually the ones defining that path.