{"id":179395,"date":"2025-06-12T21:41:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-12T21:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/179395\/"},"modified":"2025-06-12T21:41:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T21:41:08","slug":"as-genetic-data-goes-global-australia-must-sharpen-its-privacy-laws-capital-brief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/179395\/","title":{"rendered":"As genetic data goes global, Australia must sharpen its privacy laws \u2014 Capital Brief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The purchase and sale of our genetic data is now a reality. The biggest transaction of privately-held genetic data in history closed this year, and Australian biotech executives and regulators should be paying close attention to what it means \u2014 particularly for our privacy laws.<\/p>\n<p>In March, the US personal genomics and biotechnology company <b>23andMe<\/b>, best known for its ground-breaking and popular saliva-based direct-to-consumer genetic testing services, filed for bankruptcy. Then, on 19 May, the US biotechnology company <b>Regeneron<\/b> agreed to purchase 23andMe and its genetic dataset of approximately 15 million customers for US$256 million (AUD$397.5 million).<\/p>\n<p>The deal sets a new benchmark for how genetic data can be monetised.<\/p>\n<p>In 2018, 23andMe entered into a four-year, $300 million collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to use its genetic data for drug discovery and development. While not an outright &#8216;sale&#8217; of the entire database, it involved granting GSK access and research rights to 23andMe&#8217;s de-identified genetic data. In 2015, 23andMe&#8217;s competitor <b>Ancestry.com<\/b> similarly entered into a research collaboration with Google&#8217;s Calico to study the genetics of human longevity using Ancestry&#8217;s extensive genealogical and genetic data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The purchase and sale of our genetic data is now a reality. The biggest transaction of privately-held genetic&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3846],"tags":[5490,267,4348,17095,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-179395","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-genetics","8":"tag-biotech","9":"tag-genetics","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ideas","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114672571996466434","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}