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Airbnb's 'heritage travel' section is for exploring 23andMe results
23andMe has partnered with Airbnb to let users literally explore their roots. The travel website now has a special "heritage travel" section divided into the genetic populations you'd find in a 23andMe ancestry report. The regions include Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa and West Asia, Central America and Mexico, South America, East and South Asia, the Caribbean and Europe. After finding out where their ancestors hail from, 23andMe customers can click through to a specific region and plan a trip.
23andMe plans to use your genetic data to create new drugs
For over a year now, 23andMe has been stuck in a regulatory quagmire with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Although it's still able to sell its personal DNA kits, the company is effectively banned from offering health-related genetic tests in the US. A few weeks ago it was given the go-ahead for a single check, a rare disorder called Bloom syndrome, but it's only a small step towards the broader health reports it provided before. While it waits for wider FDA approval, 23andMe has decided to enter the drugs market. The company already works with major pharmaceutical firms including Pfizer and Genentech, but now it's prepared to go it alone. The startup has accrued a vast amount of health-related information from its users, so there's an obvious opportunity to apply that database to the field of medicine. Instead of just looking for health-related ailments, and offering users the results, 23andMe wants to go one step further and develop the cures too.
