deCODE You

As a follower of deCodeYou, we wanted to let you know about some important developments in the company and how we believe these will underpin our ability to continue to keep you in the forefront of understanding what the latest advances in genetics mean for you and your health.

For the past several months, deCODE has been working on restructuring its operations. As a result of these efforts, deCODE has entered into and filed concurrently with its Chapter 11 petition announced today an asset purchase agreement under which it would sell its Iceland-based human genetics operation to new owners. This is the subsidiary that conducts our human genetics research, manages our population genetics resources and provides our personal genome scans and DNA-based risk assessment tests. This agreement is subject to a number of contingencies, including a competitive bidding procedure and court approval in accordance with bankruptcy law. It also provides interim financing to enable us to continue operations during the Chapter 11 process, and we have asked the court for the customary authority to continue to provide products and services to our customers without interruption during the bankruptcy process.

Thus you should expect to continue to hear from here on all the latest in human genetics and its relevance to health and healthcare. You can read our press release here.

With best regards,

The deCODEyou team

deCODE Discovers Second Common Genetic Risk Factor for Atrial Fibrillation and Stroke. Will be integrated into deCODE AF™ DNA-based risk assessment test, and into the deCODEme™ and deCODEme Cardio™ scans.

Scientists at deCODE genetics and colleagues from Europe and the United States today report the discovery of a common single-letter variant in the sequence of the human genome (SNP) conferring increased risk of atrial fibrillation (AF) and stroke. The findings will be integrated directly into the deCODE AF™ reference laboratory test for gauging individual risk of AF and stroke and helping to identify stroke patients who may benefit from enhanced monitoring for AF. The study is published online today in Nature Genetics.
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Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Crown Princess Marie of Denmark along with deCODE scientist Unnur Thorsteinsdottir during an official visit to deCODE laboratories earlier this year.

Reykjavik, ICELAND, December 8, 2008 – deCODE genetics (Nasdaq:DCGN) today announced the discovery by an international consortium of scientists from deCODE and major European and US academic institutions of a single letter variation in the human genome (SNP) that is associated with increased fasting glucose levels and risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D). deCODE will employ its CLIA-registered genotyping laboratory and existing testing platform to swiftly integrate the finding into its deCODEme™ personal genome scan, and to assess the addition of this new variant to the company’s deCODE T2™ reference laboratory test for assessing individual risk of type 2 diabetes.
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Breast Cancer Network of Strength was started by Mimi Kaplan and Ann Marcou.

Attitudes towards breast cancer have changed quite a lot over the past three decades, a fact evidenced by the outpouring of response when stars such as Olivia Newton-John, Kylie Minogue, and, most recently, Christina Applegate, went public with their personal struggles with the disease. But this change in attitude is also reflected in many other ways and not least in the adoption of a new name for the patient advocacy and support organization that until now called itself Y-ME? Tomorrow, a gala event held at the Fairmont Hotel in Chicago will celebrate Breast Cancer Awareness Month and the evolution of Y-ME, 30 years on, into the Breast Cancer Network of Strength-a change they hope that will better communicate the organization’s mission to promote a proactive, engaged and positive approach to fighting breast cancer.

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In a recent interview Dr. Kari Stefansson, C.E.O. of deCODE genetics talked about the future for genetic tests such as deCODEme and how he believes that they will drive the shift from intervention to prevention in medicine

Lauralee Nygaard, a periodontist from Spokane, WA, says the deCODE tests are easy to take and highly cost effective but that we have to pay close attention to the results and be prepared to make some serious lifestyle changes.

Lauralee Nygaard is a dentist from Spokane, Washington. She is in her early forties and has two young children. Three years ago Lauralee had a stroke while she was performing surgery on a patient. It confirmed her suspicions about a predisposition to heart disease that she had nurtured since she was 18.

“When I was 18, I went to the doctor and said, ‘I know I’m at risk for a heart attack, my dad has hypercholesterolemia.’ The doctor laughed at me. He said, ‘you’re a skinny girl, you’re never going to have heart disease.”

A stroke at forty confirmed her worst fears: “It corroborated the fact that I knew I was at risk. I had pushed my family physician for years to be aggressively preventative with making sure I didn’t have heart disease. He always told me there was nothing they could do.”

As a dentist who had stressed the importance of preventative care for years, Lauralee was ready to practice what she had preached

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The second part of NBC Nightly News coverage of deCODE genetics and the genetic research conducted with the help of the Icelandic nation. Bazell continues to look at the company he sees as being at the cutting edge of genetic research.

In a paper published online today in the journal Nature, a team of deCODE scientists detail a major mechanism through which genetic factors contribute to major public health problems.

In its work on the inherited components of dozens of common diseases, deCODE has discovered gene variants that significantly affect individual susceptibility or protection against disease. In the common forms of these conditions – such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases – deCODE has previously shown that genetic variants confer increased or decreased risk by up-regulating or down-regulating the activity of major biological pathways.

In today’s paper, the deCODE team and collaborators from Merck demonstrate one of the principal ways in which the activity of biological pathways is functionally perturbed in a quintessentially complex condition: obesity.

Kari Stefansson, CEO of deCODE, put the study into context: “One of the observations we have made in our work on the isolation of disease genes is that the genetic risk of common diseases is often conferred by variations in the sequence of the genome that affect expression of genes. Hence, one of the ways to approach the study of common diseases is through the analysis of gene expression. This paper provides a substantial contribution towards the understanding of gene expression in man and one example of how it can be used to expand our knowledge of one disease, namely obesity.”

deCODE scientists today announced the discovery of two more genetic variants linked with increased risk of prostate cancer. These variants have been integrated into the prostate cancer disease module in deCODEme™, and subscribers can check for them in their updated personal profile.

These latest SNPs are the fourth set of variants that deCODE has linked to prostate cancer risk. They are single-letter variations in the genome – SNPs – located on chromosome 2 and on the X chromosome. The SNPs confer relatively modest increases in risk – of approximately 20% and 15% per copy carried, respectively – but because they are also quite common they are each believed to contribute to about 5% of prostate cancer cases. They were found through the analysis of 300,000 SNPs in 23,000 Icelanders in deCODE’s prostate cancer studies, and then confirmed in an analysis of more than 15,500 individuals from seven different cohorts from Europe and the United States.

Published studies by major academic research groups in the United States and Europe have over the past month provided strong validation of the role of the other common risk variants, on chromosomes 8 and 17, discovered by deCODE in 2006 and 2007. Altogether, the prostate cancer risk variants now included in deCODEme™ contribute to more than 50% of all cases of the disease. Because of these variants, 10% of men are at twice the risk and 1% of men are at three times the risk of the disease in the general population.

For those subscribers who believe they should consider having a DNA-based diagnostic test for prostate cancer risk variants that they can use with their doctor, deCODE has also just launched deCODEPrCa™, the first such test aimed at understanding individual risk of the disease.