Stop Disease 5 Years Early: AI + DNA Playbook With 23andMe's Founder Anne Wojcicki

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:30)
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**Anne Wojcicki** (1:00)
Every single person can benefit from genetic information and use that to modify and prevent disease.

**Marina Mogilko** (1:08)
This is Anne. She built 23andMe, a genetic testing company that provides ancestry breakdowns and health predisposition insights. More than 14 million people have used its DNA test, helping build one of the world's largest genetic datasets. Then it all collapsed. Her board resigned and she lost her company. 2024 was a brutal year for you with bankruptcy and having to buy out your company. Did you ever have thoughts of giving up?

**Anne Wojcicki** (1:35)
I thought about it a lot because everything is pointing in the direction that things are not going well.

**Marina Mogilko** (1:40)
But after winning a court approved auction, she bought the company back and turned it into a non-profit. Now she's working to combine DNA datasets with AI to help people catch disease before they feel it. What can AI plus DNA do now? What a doctor couldn't do five years ago.

**Anne Wojcicki** (1:56)
You can pull in your medical record, link all this then with your genetics and understand where you could potentially intervene today and change the outcome.

**Marina Mogilko** (2:06)
From all the data that you're seeing, what do you think of the diseases that have the best chance of being cured or treated in a different way in the next five years?

**Anne Wojcicki** (2:14)
I think a couple of things. One.

**Marina Mogilko** (2:19)
My audience really loves using AI for everything. What can AI plus DNA do now? What a doctor couldn't do five years ago.

**Anne Wojcicki** (2:26)
I love that.
I feel like we're finally getting to the point where everything that we set out to do back in 2006 can start to happen. That really revolves around preventing disease. I think the fundamental issue in the healthcare system is that when you go to the doctor today, they're compensated to treat disease. Almost no aspect of healthcare rewards you and makes money on disease prevention. It's really going to fall in the hands of you, the consumer, like you, the individual are going to have to leverage all these different ways, all these different means that are now in your power to start to understand what your health risks are and then to help start to manage that more and more. So 23andMe started with this idea is that the most fundamental layer of your health is your genetics. So for example, if you want to be healthy and you're worried about all your cholesterol numbers and let's say you just have very high numbers, and you have a genetic risk factor called familial hypocholesterolemia.

**Marina Mogilko** (3:26)
That's me.

**Anne Wojcicki** (3:27)
Is it really?

**Marina Mogilko** (3:27)
Yes.

**Anne Wojcicki** (3:28)
Okay. So you're a prime example of this. No matter what you do with your diet, you have to take a statin. And so it's that type of thing is like you find out that you have something, you have high cholesterol numbers, but there's a limit to how much the environment can be modified to impact that. So you have to go on a therapy. And there's the aspects of, for instance, in cancer, like if you have hereditary colon cancer, hereditary breast cancer, you need more proactive screening.
Environment definitely makes a difference there, but you have to be proactive with the medical world. And so for me, your genetics was always this core layer where you have to understand genetically, do you have a significant risk factor? Where are you on the spectrum for heart disease, for cancer risk, for other things that could be passed down to your children? Like understanding all of that is really step one. What's amazing today is that you can pull in all this other information, your wearable information, your zip coat has your air quality and your water quality. You can pull in your medical record and you can link all this then with your genetics and really understand are there signs, are there things happening where you could potentially intervene today, either with a medical world or with your lifestyle and change the outcome.