The market just got more crowded for genetic risk testing

Another consumer DNA company is moving into the business of predicting disease. MyHeritage, which until now had been a genetic genealogy site, yesterday rolled out its first health tests.

For $199, customers can swab their cheek, mail in their sample, and receive a report on the likelihood that they will develop conditions including colorectal cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The new offering is a sign of the excitement around such testing — as well as just how hard it is to build a successful business around ancestry testing alone.

MyHeritage’s suite of new tests include three that rely on polygenic risk scores — which attempt to gauge how a multitude of genetic alterations affect a person’s chances of developing a disease. Those scores are for heart disease, breast cancer, and, following in the footsteps of a test rolled out by competitor 23andMe in March, type 2 diabetes. Keep in mind, though, that MyHeritage says its polygenic risk score tests will only work in customers who are of predominantly European ancestry — a fraught and common limitation in a field in which algorithms were developed mainly using the DNA of white people.