Arivale, describes itself as “a revolutionary new wellness company combining cutting-edge science, an intimate and unprecedented view of your body, and personalized coaching to help you achieve your unique wellness potential.”
The company has impressive ambitions: “We created Arivale to invent the future of health and create a new industry: scientific wellness. Our mission is to empower you to optimize your overall health so you can do more of what you love in life. We start by getting to know you—the whole you—at the deepest level by looking at your genome, your blood, gut microbiome, and lifestyle. Then we connect you with a coach who will help explain your data and provide you with clear, actionable, lifestyle recommendations.”
Hood is controversial because his role has been to drive science rather than he, himself, emerging as someone whose own discoveries are of Nobel quality. The names of people who collaborated with Lee Hood and went on to great success in biology … people like Roger Perlmutter, former Chair of the UW Immunology Dept, then scientific director of AMGEN and now the head of Merck.
Lee Hood came to Seattle, with support from Bill Gates, to found the UW’s Genome Sciences Department. That effort continues with today’s Genome Sciences assuming a leading role across the world .. but without Lee Hood. Dr. Hood and the UW split acrimoniously over Hood’s effort to get more independence within the state school. Hood wanted to create an entrepreneurial institute … what is now his “Institute for Systems Biology.” This was difficult in a state school bound by rules of scientific openness and a tradition of much smaller, personal laboratories.
With this effort, Hood is entering a field already sprouting with companies sponsored by Google (23&me), Regeneron, Amgen and others. Amgen’s effort includes buying the rights to the lineage and health records database of Iceland and to the sequence data for its population. (The decision of Amgen to leave Seattle after acquiring the Iceland deal was very disappointing to me.) Regeneron. lead by George Yancopoulos and Roy Vagelos is especially impressive. Vagelos is the former head of Merck who led that country in making its genetic sequencing data publicly available. Regeneron’s entry includes a deal with Geissinger clinic to combine sequence data and clinical data for 100,000 patients.
Here in Seattle all the UW also has its own in house effort and the Hutch has the remarkable SAGE program run by another former colleague of Dr. Hood’s Steve Friend. If Arivale is more than hype, it will have to somehow bring together a number of these competitors.