Phenomix Sciences launches its biobanking registry, marking the first obesity registry to study the impact of personalized treatment based on phenotyping. The impact of this biobanking registry and the data it will yield has the potential to change the entire system’s approach to obesity, from a treatment recommendation to the way payers determine coverage and how the industry combines diagnostics testing with drug therapy.
Obesity’s roots lie in individual DNA; however, evidence suggests there is a complicated web connecting obesity to age, race, gender, education, and socioeconomic status. Understanding a person’s obesity phenotype — the combination of genes with environmental and behavioural factors — can help pinpoint the cause of weight gain. Phenomix’s phenotypes are based on research from its physician founders, Andres Acosta, MD, PhD and Michael Camilleri, MD of Mayo Clinic, that has demonstrated when patients have been phenotyped and prescribed the right medications, they can achieve up to 16 per cent total body weight loss (TBWL).
The data collected will supplement the 20 billion unique data points that make up the Phenomix Sciences Obesity Platform. Mayo Clinic is the first to enrol in the registry with its Rochester site set to contribute patient outcomes from 2,000 patients undergoing treatment for obesity to its biobank.
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