Over the last few months 23andMe has assembled a virtual dream team to make up its therapeutics group.
Starting with the appointment of Richard Scheller, Ph.D. as chief science officer and head of therapeutics, 23andMe has filled out the team with some top-notch talent including another luminary Robert Gentleman, Ph.D., as vice president of computational biology.
The two have talked about the potential for using 23andMe’s novel research model to make some real breakthroughs and bring better treatments to people who really need them. As Robert recently said in an interview with Bio-IT World, most of us have friends or family who have suffered from illness.
“And the motivation for doing some of this stuff is really not personal in the sense [of being] about you yourself, but it’s about your family, it’s about your friends, it’s about people around you,” Robert said.
It’s hard not to hear these men talk about their work, as Robert did earlier this month with a writer from Bio-IT World, and not feel a sense of excitement about the future.
“I also want to emphasize, this is just a fantastic time to be a computational biologist,” he said.
Check out his interview here.
