SAN FRANCISCO — Consumer genetics giant 23andMe announced Thursday that it would move deeper into the business of clinical trial recruitment, partnering with a fast-growing startup to help match its customers with nearby study sites based on their diseases, demographics, and DNA.
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This story touches on a tricky problem: The use for recruitment purposes of a service that people would have understood to be private and not for research purposes.
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But the new partnership with TrialSpark, which offers a tech-powered alternative to traditional contract research organizations, may help 23andMe address one of the biggest challenges in clinical trial recruitment: geography. The idea is that patients who want to enroll in a clinical trial centered out of, say, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, won’t have to fly to New York and can instead participate by visiting their local doctor’s office.
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