Nucleus Genomics, a genetic testing startup founded by 25-year-old Kian Sadeghi, initially launched in 2021 with the goal of calculating a patient’s risk for specific diseases.
But it’s been courting controversy for years with products that claim to tell people how their genetics correlate to a host of complex issues, including their IQ.
On Wednesday, it ratcheted up the controversy to an earsplitting level when it announced a new product called Nucleus Embryo with a tweet that said: “Every parent wants to give their children more than they had. For the first time in human history, Nucleus adds a new tool to that commitment.”
Nucleus says it can test IVF embryos not just for well-known specific genes that have a high chance of illnesses like breast cancer, but also for appearance — sex, height, hair color, eye color — as well as IQ and complex health attributes like anxiety and ADHD.
The launch video includes a screenshot of a comparison menu. The idea is to help parents choose which embryos to pick and which ones to, perhaps, discard.
Genetic testing of embryos isn’t unheard of. IVF physicians can test for genes that can cause conditions like Down syndrome, or when parents know they are of high risk for a particular genetic disorder, like cystic fibrosis.
But that’s not exactly what Nucleus is doing. It is using controversial “polygenic scores” to determine “complex genetic outcomes, like intelligence and anxiety,” a spokesperson says.
According to the National Human Genome Research Institute, polygenic scores only calculate the probabilities of a certain complex illness occurring, mainly within populations. “A polygenic risk score can only explain the relative risk for a disease,” the NHGR says. This is not the same as discovering a specific gene, such as the BRCA1 gene mutation, which gives a person a 60% to 80% “absolute risk of breast cancer,” the NHGR says.
There’s a reason doctors don’t typically use such tests for individuals. “Polygenic risk scores are not yet routinely used by health professionals because there are no guidelines for practice and researchers are still improving how these scores are generated,” according to the NHGR.
Nucleus defends that its method can be used to determine an individual’s risk. The spokesperson pointed us to a 2018 paper where the authors said they had developed validated methods for five common diseases: coronary artery disease, atrial fibrillation, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and breast cancer.
That paper was advocating screenings to help individuals make lifestyle or therapeutic decisions, similar to Nucleus’s initial concept.
Wednesday’s tweet was promising parents that Nucleus can help them create designer babies. It has now been viewed more than 4 million times and has hundreds of comments, many of them either expressing disbelief that this works as promised, or horror at the idea.
One VC chimed into the discussion saying, “I was going to type something like Noah get the boat but honestly the reality of this just makes me so nauseous.”
Nucleus has experienced this kind of controversy before, as TechCrunch previously reported, when it announced its $14 million Series A earlier this year. The startup is backed by Founders Fund; Alexis Ohanian’s 776; and angels, including Adrian Aoun (CEO at Forward Health), Brent Saunders (former CEO at Allergan), and Matteo Franceschetti (CEO at Eight Sleep).
Last year, Sadeghi launched Nucleus IQ, which is supposed to tell users how much their genetics influence intelligence. The product was blasted as “bad science and big business” by some critics. Sadeghi published a lengthy defense of his company’s methodology.
Even so, telling adults that they are genetically smart is one thing. Telling IVF parents that they can choose the appearance and other complex attributes for their children is, many would argue, something else.
Nucleus is not currently conducting such tests via IVF lab partners itself, The Wall Street Journal reports. It’s partnering with Genomic Prediction, which works with IVF clinics. A Genomic executive told the WSJ that many parents request intelligence tests, and it doesn’t provide that. Parents can voluntarily upload genetic data information to Nucleus if they want to pursue it.
Or, as Sadeghi said in the launch video aimed at would-be parents: “Not that long ago, IVF-1 sparked fear and the stigma of test tube babies,” he said. “What was once controversial is now an everyday practice. The same is true with genetic optimization. The technology is now here and it’s here to stay.”