Impact of the 23andMe bankruptcy on preserving the public benefit of scientific data

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Impact of the 23andMe bankruptcy on preserving the public benefit of scientific data

The bankruptcy of 23andMe was an inflection point for the direct-to-consumer genetics market. Although the privacy of consumer data has been highlighted by many as a concern, we discuss another key tension in this case: the corporate enclosure of scientific data that has considerable potential value for biomedical research and public health.

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Acknowledgements

J.L. is supported by NIH award number T32HG009496. T.S. is supported by NIH award number R00AG068544 and NSF 2410335. The authors acknowledge the expertise and support of their counsel, M. Lindsay, S. Waterman and M. J. Olsen, who represented the limited objectors in the 23andMe bankruptcy. The authors further acknowledge the other signatories to the limited objection including D. G. Aaron, K. A. Kaphingst, H. Fernandez-Lynch, C. J. Morten, A. K. Rai, K. J. Strandburg, L. Vertinsky and E. Vilain.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Jonathan E. LoTempio Jr

    Present address: Department of Pediatrics, Division of Genetics, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jonathan E. LoTempio Jr & Jonathan D. Moreno

  2. Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

    Christopher R. Donohue

  3. Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, Villanova, PA, USA

    Ana Santos Rutschman

  4. College of Law, DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Joshua Sarnoff

  5. Center for Health Law Studies, Saint Louis University School of Law, St. Louis, MO, USA

    Michael S. Sinha

  6. Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, USA

    Thomas Stoeger

  7. University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Jorge L. Contreras

Authors

  1. Jonathan E. LoTempio Jr
  2. Christopher R. Donohue
  3. Jonathan D. Moreno
  4. Ana Santos Rutschman
  5. Joshua Sarnoff
  6. Michael S. Sinha
  7. Thomas Stoeger
  8. Jorge L. Contreras

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonathan E. LoTempio Jr.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors are signatories to a limited objection of intellectual property, health law and bioethics scholars to debtors’ proposed asset sale in the bankruptcy of 23andMe holding co. filed on 10 June 2025 with the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in Case no. 25-40976-357, in re. 23andMe Holding co., et al., debtors. J.L.C. is a 23andMe customer.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Genetics thanks Yann Joly and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

This is a one-page supplement that includes all bankruptcy case files referenced in our Comment on 23andMe.

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LoTempio, J.E., Donohue, C.R., Moreno, J.D. et al. Impact of the 23andMe bankruptcy on preserving the public benefit of scientific data. Nat Genet (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-025-02423-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-025-02423-8

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