Apple Has Plans for Your DNA

The iPhone could become a new tool in genetic studies. 

 

 Of all the rumors ever to swirl around the world’s most valuable company, this may be the first that could involve spitting in a plastic cup.

Apple is collaborating with U.S. researchers to help launch apps that would offer some iPhone owners the chance to get their DNA tested, many of them for the first time, according to people familiar with the plans.
The apps are based on ResearchKit, a software platform Apple introduced in March that helps hospitals or scientists run medical studies on iPhones by collecting data from the devices’ sensors or through surveys.
The first five ResearchKit apps, including one called mPower that tracks symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, quickly recruited thousands of participants in a few days, demonstrating the reach of Apple’s platform.


“Apple launched ResearchKit and got a fantastic response. The obvious next thing is to collect DNA,” says Gholson Lyon, a geneticist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, who isn’t involved with the studies.
Nudging iPhone owners to submit DNA samples to researchers would thrust Apple’s devices into the center of a widening battle for genetic information. Universities, large technology companies like Google (see “Google Wants to Store Your Genome”), direct-to-consumer labs, and even the U.S. government (see “U.S. to Develop DNA Study of One Million People”) are all trying to amass mega-databases of gene information to uncover clues about the causes of disease (see “Internet of DNA”).
In two initial studies planned, Apple isn’t going to directly collect or test DNA itself. That will be done by academic partners. The data would be maintained by scientists in a computing cloud, but certain findings could appear directly on consumers’ iPhones as well. Eventually, it’s even possible consumers might swipe to share “my genes” as easily as they do their location.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. But one person with knowledge of the plans said the company’s eventual aim is to “enable the individual to show and share” DNA information with different recipients, including organizers of scientific studies. This person, like others with knowledge of the research, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the company’s insistence on secrecy.

One of these people said the DNA-app studies could still be cancelled, but another said Apple wants the apps ready for the company’s worldwide developers’ conference, to be held in June in San Francisco.
Sophisticated data
Starting last year, Apple began taking steps to make its devices indispensable for “digital health.” Its latest version of the iOS operating system includes an app called Health, which has fields for more than 70 types of health data—everything from your weight to how many milligrams of manganese you eat (as yet, there’s no field for your genome). Apple also entered a partnership with IBM to develop health apps for nurses and hospitals, as well as to mine medical data.
Now Apple is closely involved in shaping initial studies that will collect DNA. One, planned by the University of California, San Francisco, would study causes of premature birth by combining gene tests with other data collected on the phones of expectant mothers. A different study would be led by Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Atul Butte, leader of the UCSF study and head of the Institute for Computational Health Sciences, said he could not comment on Apple’s involvement. “The first five [ResearchKit] studies have been great and are showing how fast Apple can recruit. I and many others are looking at types of trials that are more sophisticated,” Butte says. Noting that the genetic causes of premature birth aren’t well understood, he says, “I look forward to the day when we can get more sophisticated data than activity, like DNA or clinical data.”


To join one of the studies, a person would agree to have a gene test carried out—for instance, by returning a “spit kit” to a laboratory approved by Apple. The first such labs are said to be the advanced gene-sequencing centers operated by UCSF and Mount Sinai.
The planned DNA studies would look at 100 or fewer medically important disease genes (known as a “gene panel”), not a person’s entire genome. These targeted tests, if done at large scale, would not cost more than a few hundred dollars each.
Like the ResearchKit apps released so far, the studies would be approved by Apple and by an institutional review board, a type of oversight body that advises researchers on studies involving volunteers.
The ResearchKit program has been spearheaded by Stephen Friend, a onetime pharmaceutical company executive and now the head of Sage Bionetworks, a nonprofit that advocates for open scientific research. Friend’s vision for a data “commons” in which study subjects are active participants in scientific research was enthusiastically embraced by Apple starting in 2013. Friend, whom Apple describes as a medical technology advisor, declined an interview request through an assistant.