If you knew you were predisposed to a serious disease in your lifetime with pinpoint accuracy, would it motivate you to make different health choices?
What impact would this kind of forewarning have on our overstretched health system, which currently bulges with patients in the acute stage of disease?
Genetic Technologies Limited (ASX:GTG, NASDAQ:GENE, OTC:GNTLF), a leading biotech company, is on a mission to revolutionise preventative healthcare by predicting individual risk of serious diseases and the people who are likely to succumb to down the track, using a combination of genetics and clinical risk factors.
The company’s mission is to deliver a non-invasive saliva-based genetic testing solution that empowers individuals and their doctors to make informed decisions about their health – to take action while they are still disease-free.
In this article:
- A bird's eye view of the product
- Powerfully informed decisions
- The future standard of care
- Why would you want to ‘see into the future’?
- Cost and efficiency in the healthcare sector
Preventative health is a passion for Simon Morriss, who lost his sister to melanoma when she was just 40 years of age.
He is adamant that early disease detection, through regular screening, and keeping fit and well – he regularly rides socially, runs and plays team sport – are infinitely preferable to treatment when it’s too late.
Morriss took a non-clinical pathway to the leadership of Genetic Technologies, previously working for Blackmores and Sanofi (EPA:SASY).
At these two giants of wellness, he developed an understanding of a range of health solutions, from vitamins, supplements and over-the-counter products to ethical drugs for rare diseases.
“We created a full spectrum of health outcomes for people across the portfolio. And unlike most people that fall into the biotech space, I don't have a scientific or a medical or a clinical background,” he says.
But Morriss’ extensive commercial background, including a passion for building brands, gave him a unique perspective on Genetic Technologies’ work to identify individual risk of serious disease, to allow for early intervention – with the potential to revolutionise the healthcare sector.
“When I first joined the organisation, they needed someone to help commercialise it, to build that brand and take it to the world,” he says.
“And I could see we had this incredible talent pool of people, including epidemiologists, biostatisticians, clinicians and doctors, that have created and refined this amazing innovation.
“They just needed someone to shout about it from the rooftops and really showcase the innovation that our team had built.
“I was very fortunate to be able to bring my skills into Genetic Technologies and simply leverage the amazing talent that we have here in the organisation.”
Powerfully informed decisions
Genetic Technologies offers a comprehensive genetic testing solution that identifies an individual's risk of serious diseases well before their onset.
Using a simple saliva-based test, the company combines genetic information with clinical risk factors such as BMI, menopausal status, age and ethnicity to determine an individual's personalised risk profile.
This approach goes beyond family history and traditional genetic markers, providing a more accurate assessment of disease risk.
The power of Genetic Technologies' genetic testing lies in its ability to place choice in the individual’s hands, allowing them to make informed decisions about their health.
The company looks at heart disease, to take one example, beyond the usual measures such as cholesterol levels.
“We look at tiny genetic changes called single nucleotide polymorphisms, (SNPs or ‘snips’), the most common type of genetic variation among people.
“Each SNP represents a difference in a single DNA building block, called a nucleotide. For example, a SNP may replace the nucleotide cytosine (C) with the nucleotide thymine (T) in a certain stretch of DNA.
“We look at more than 1,000 different SNPs that help us understand an individual’s risk of getting coronary artery disease, way beyond family history,” Morriss says.
“We look at that for Type II diabetes and for atrial fibrillation as well.”
In the US, Genetic Technologies also launched a test to assess the risk of getting a serious case of COVID-19: “Not whether you are going to get it or not, but whether or not you are likely to be hospitalised, or potentially have a fatal impact from the disease,” he says.
In a country where vaccines weren’t mandated, this provided a guide to individuals’ decisions about their healthcare.
The future standard of care
“From about age 35, we can identify who's going to be at elevated risk and who's not going to be at elevated risk of about 70% of diseases that cause mortality and morbidity,” Morriss says.
The company’s strategy is to introduce the test as a standard of care early in life, through the family doctor.
“You only need to do the genetic test once and then you understand what that person's genetic risks are, but you can change lifestyle and other clinical factors to lower somebody's risk,” he says.
“That's where our vision is. To become a standard of care in general practice – where the doctor can have that relationship and be the referring partner for that patient for years to come.”
Obstetric and gynaecological specialists in the US are big adopters of the technology because of their relationship with female patients: “They understand clinical risk issues with regards to breast and ovarian cancer, and they become a referring partner for every other disease,” he explains.
“Oncologists are a little too far down the track because if you're starting to see an oncologist, you've likely either got symptoms or have a family history – the horse may have bolted. We offer a solution that identifies those at risk well before that.”
Indeed, when it comes to breast cancer, the oft-cited example where high-profile potential sufferers like Angelina Jolie have used genetic information to proactively reduce their risk, the technology is ground-breaking.
“Angelina Jolie is carrying a genetic mutation that results in a high incidence of breast cancer, however, that mutation is only present in 5% of women who develop this cancer,” Morriss says.
“Another 10% of women have family history that puts them at risk. The remaining 85% of women who develop breast cancer with none of these risks.
“And that's what our test looks for, your individual risk, from a genetics point of view, plus your clinical risk factors such as BMI, menopausal status, age and ethnicity.
“The combination of these factors provides you with your individual risk of that disease, well beyond the pathogenic, or the familial history, from a simple saliva-based test.”
Why would you want to ‘see into the future’?
The question that Morriss must field quite regularly is not just how predisposed people are to a disease but how predisposed they are to knowing about it.
Aren’t there people who resist the prospect of knowing what is likely to claim their lives in the end?
“Why wouldn't you want to know that?” he asks. “Because that early detection will actually lead to less invasive and less painful solutions, usually leading to a better outcome. It also generally leads to lower-cost treatment options and a higher survival rate, ultimately saving lives.
“We are also able to predict risk of colorectal, prostate cancer, heart disease, melanoma and Type II diabetes.
“It is just so compelling to say we have a test that helps improve the health of populations worldwide, by the insights and increased level of surveillance the test can provide for that individual and their doctor.
Morriss thinks that, ultimately, there will people who genuinely don't want to know. “And you have to respect that view. We're just focusing on those who truly want to understand their risk of developing a serious disease during their life.
“And then they can take informed proactive steps with their doctor to ensure that they catch something early.”
It’s also important to remember that this is not a diagnostic test and those who take the test may not be unwell.
The information is designed to prepare an individual and their treating professionals with the tools to ward off any disease to which they may have a predisposition, well before the pain, heartache and expense that follows a clinical diagnosis.
Ultimately, a lot of the decisions around health care are about weighing risk. Genetic Technologies is at the fascinating juncture between preventative health – the decisions we take every day to make ourselves less susceptible to illness – and informed consent.
“This needs to be a wellness conversation, a proactive conversation around people understanding their individual risks and empowering them to make decisions with their doctors in mind, as opposed to it being the fear of a time bomb,” Morriss continues.
“In fact, 50% of the population live with at least one or more chronic illnesses. If you were to know what that was and could actually have a plan in place for its surveillance, it gives you a wonderful shot of improving your own personal health because there are genuinely things that you can do to reduce your individual risk of that disease well before onset, and that's the way we approach it.”
As for those who are concerned about their data, and what health funds might do with it, Morriss reminds us that there is a moratorium on using this information for such a purpose in Australia.
“But my challenge to the industry is to say, okay, rather than not insuring someone because they're at risk of getting a disease, why not say, ‘I will insure you if you stick to this screening protocol’, because I know that if I pick it up at stage one versus stage three, as an insurer, it's going to cost me less to treat you and you're going to survive longer to pay me more premiums,” Morriss says.
“They are business people and at the end of the day, it's an odds, or risk mitigation, game.”
Cost and efficiency in the healthcare sector
Through earlier detection and resultant cheaper costs to treat, the health solution Genetic Technologies offers can save the global health system by an estimated 3.6% or $1.4 billion annually.
“There are compelling reasons to implement a preventative solution, even just for one disease,” says Morriss.
“And we could do that for multiple diseases.”
For Morriss, it’s about tipping the paradigm on its head. At the moment, 95% of the money in the system is being spent on treatment.
“And really, there's a small amount of money being spent on screening and preventative health. If you were to screen, then you would be far more targeted about what you treat and who you're treating.
“Rather than trying to be all things to all people, and a one size fits all approach, you actually screen people knowing who's at risk of what and then you apply that screening protocol.
“And this makes medicine a precision-based business, as opposed to being all things to all people, a one-size-fits-all model that is flawed, broken and expensive.
“There are significant healthcare savings to be made.”