dnalife: Personalized Medicine Powered by Accurate Genetic Information

Mark Sherwood, Doctor, dnalife

Want to predict who should take certain medications and who will suffer side effects? Genetic testing can help. Genetic testing paves the way for personalized medicine, enabling physicians to use a patient’s genetic profile to guide treatment choices. But the current picture of personalized medicine isn’t as pretty as it appears. The medical community is long long away from understanding genetics completely. And any action that patients take based on the doctor’s insights is based on superficial information, untrustworthy at best. At a time when healthcare is drifting toward personalized medicine, patients want to be in the driver’s seat of their care journey. Needless to say, genetics is here for the rest of humanity and its understanding among people will only increase but you need qualified professionals to make it count.

But there is a completely different game being played in the healthcare industry. “The current genetics testing landscape resembles the tortoise and hare story,” begins Chris Moore, co-founder of DNALife. “There are lot of hares out there in the medical community who want to grab huge revenue based on little understanding in the garb of responsive medicine.” Calling out such misleading practices, DNALife empowers doctors with the right genetic testing tools and up-to—date knowledge that makes them confident about the care outcomes. “So, in the run up to this transformation in healthcare, we are the tortoise,” adds Moore.

When Moore joined hands with gene expert Dr. Daniel Meyersfeld to establish DNALife, the mission and vision of the company was clear: to empower patients with accurate science, not bombarding them with questionable interpretation in the quest to efficient healthcare delivery. “Unlike the race that everyone was interested to participate in, I was extremely cautious with genetics, measuring a lot of different assays, taking on board genetic information that is valuable to patients and providing doctors with a better understanding of how genes function. This way, doctors can weave the right knowledge into the patient care program from the get-go,” informs Moore.

To that end, the company’s leadership made a clear and conscious decision to take an educational route to delivering its genetics testing solutions that are based on nutrigenomics, pharmacogenomics, and test pairing. “We don’t sell any genetic test to a doctor who hasn’t done DNALife training. It isn’t arrogance but our commitment to ensure that the clinician is extremely well-versed and trained in the SNPs and the science surrounding them. So they can confidently provide their patients with valued information,” informs Moore.

Today, DNALife’s certification-based genetics testing course is being availed by thousands of doctors from all over the world. The course is run live in 20+ countries. Multiple online training sessions have been carried out in the post- COVID-19 world and the online sessions have been hugely successful. Doctors dedicate three days of their life listening to expert educational staff to upskill themselves and become adept at using DNALife’s products, which, in turn, improves value to the patients.

Clinical Insights through Futuristic Products

DNA Mind, DNA Health, DNA Skin, DNA Smile, DNA Diet, DNA Sport, and DNA Oestrogen, among others are some of the products that the company offers.

With these products, DNALife aims to introduce more accurate tests that will come into the market to help different subsets of the overall medical and patient community. “If there is a patient population that suffers from diabetes, wouldn’t it be great if we begin to understand the underlying causes of that diabetes,” highlights Moore.

The company is looking at three products in 2021 all of which are diverse and focused on the underlying biochemistry. The first one is DNAMind that looks at how genes associated with neurofunction play a role in expression. So, we can understand people at risk, for instance, depression or dependencies. “And, if you are from a family that has sufferers from both, you can clearly know what you can do to mitigate that. Those patients then take responsibility for their own health,” says Moore. DNASmile is another solution that focuses on genes associated with your oral health and aids in improved mouth hygiene. Dentists can transfer knowledge to the patient who can then take the responsibility of their own health.

DNALife is excited about their new product, GrowBaby. This product enables improved understanding of the genes of the parents, especially the mother, and provides valuable insight into the functioning of key biological pathways that influence maternal and fetal health, and how these relate to the major health outcomes for both mom and baby, such as carrying to term, having a good birth weight, and avoiding gestational disorders like preeclampsia. The report provides valuable insights into how you can optimise health outcomes for mom and baby using gene-based personalised diet, supplement, and lifestyle interventions. Preconception and the perinatal time period provide a unique opportunity to establish the foundations for optimum health and development across the lifespan. Targeted interventions, using insights from a genetic test, can optimise the health of the mother, supporting a healthier pregnancy, and resulting in transgenerational health and resilience.

It isn’t arrogance but our commitment to ensure that the clinician is extremely well-versed and trained in the SNPs and the science surrounding them

In a case study, Jane Doe had several medical conditions such as fatigue, hormone imbalance, sleep issues, and poor libido. She regularly took multiple supplements and exercised routinely but despite this she continued to have pain in her muscles and joints and she had challenges gaining muscle mass. With DNALife stepping into the scene to understand the methylation, inflammation, and oxidative stress areas, there has been a considerable improvement in her health in the last six months. DNALife advised a range of lifestyle changes based on the genetic information gained from the test. This ensured that the treatment is on the correct path with relevant nutrients reaching optimal cellular level. Adequate measures were recommended in terms of diet intake, supplement control, exercise, and sleep.

“The medical industry needs to remain true to the science. It needs to demand right answers from science,” believes Moore. In this context, Moor expects that there will be greater adoption of genetics in both macro healthcare strategic evaluation and micro healthcare strategies for individual medicine. The future of medicine is all about individualization. And, healthcare operator such as British NHS has put this as a cornerstone of their healthcare strategy. “We are going to see a general acceptance both within the medical community and the patient cohorts,” concludes Moore.

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Company
dnalife

Headquarters
Denmark

Management
Mark Sherwood, Doctor, dnalife

Description
dnalife is a provider of genetic testing services, whose goal is to make the science behind precision medicine readily accessible to every clinical practice and alleviate the complexities surrounding DNA and functional testing. The company believes that genetic testing should be considered in context of broader examination, and therefore, performs its tests exclusively through highly trained practitioners.