Israeli genealogy company MyHeritage has announced the acquisition of US genetic data services company River Road Bio and its two subsidiaries SNPedia and Promethease.
Founded in 2003 by CEO Gilad Japhet, MyHeritage is a global discovery platform for exploring family history, uncovering ethnic origins, finding new relatives, and gaining health insights. This is MyHeritage’s tenth acquisition and consolidates its position in consumer genomics.
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SNPedia.com was launched in 2006 and is a wiki that contains a broad, community-curated knowledge base linking between genetic variants and medical conditions, as well as traits, citing over 30,000 peer-reviewed scientific publications. MyHeritage plans to maintain SNPedia as a free resource under the same terms, and will utilize this comprehensive knowledge base to enhance future versions of MyHeritage’s DNA health products.
Promethease.com is a literature retrieval service. It allows consumers to upload their raw DNA data (from services such as Ancestry.com, 23andMe, and others) and automatically compare it to SNPedia to see relevant scientific findings regarding their genome. The Promethease service currently costs $12, and offers consumers the option to store their DNA data.
MyHeritage CSO Dr. Yaniv Erlich said, “The acquisition of SNPedia and Promethease expands MyHeritage’s intellectual property in medical genetics. Going forward, SNPedia will empower us to broaden the scope of health reports provided by the MyHeritage DNA Health+Ancestry test and propel it to become a global market leader in consumer DNA testing. We are happy to keep SNPedia as a free resource for the academic community and for consumers.”
“We are pleased with the acquisition by MyHeritage. We expect this to extend SNPedia’s contribution to even more consumers and thereby improve millions of lives through MyHeritage’s popular DNA testing platform,” said Dr. Greg Lennon, co-founder of SNPedia and Promethease.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on September 8, 2019
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