MapmyGenome Cares About Your Health

MapmyGenome Cares About Your Health

Interview with Anu Acharya, Co-Founder and CEO of MapmyGenome. Originally published by DNAweekly.

What is your organisation’s mission?

We aim to help consumers know more about themselves by not just understanding their genetic predispositions but also by helping them correlate it with other factors like lifestyle and other habits — especially diet and nutrition. This way, we can give them recommendations on what they can do to reduce their overall risk of disease and to lead a healthier life.

How Does Genome Mapping Work?

Genome mapping is used for two different reasons. One is a preventive purpose that helps you understand your genetic predisposition, even if you might not have a preexisting condition, so you can take precautionary measures. The other is prescribed by doctors when there is a specific condition that needs diagnosis. We call the first one “personal genomics” for prevention and the second one “clinical genomics” to analyse specific genes that are of interest.

What Makes MapmyGenome Different?

At MapmyGenome, one of our biggest advantages is that people get to spend more than an hour with the genetic counsellor and get specific recommendations. We are a personal genomics company, but we are much more engaged with our consumers and want to make sure that we can help them by harnessing their DNA. The most important benefit is that we build healthy habits. Most lifestyle-related diseases like cardiovascular disease or diabetes are preventable — 80% of cardiovascular disease is preventable; 60% of diabetes is preventable. Genes are a guiding star and not your destiny.

What Is the Future of This Industry?

This will become extremely helpful in understanding not just at an individual level, but also at a much larger level, why certain subsets of people are affected by disease differently. If you take the example of COVID-19, one of the things that everybody is trying to understand is whether specific people are likely to have a genetic predisposition that is different from others.