Proove Biosciences, which sold dubious DNA tests to predict addiction risk, sells off assets as CEO departs amid criminal probe
By Charles Piller,
STAT
| 08. 31. 2017
Proove Biosciences, a formerly high-flying genetic testing firm whose science and business practices have been challenged by experts and former employees, has been placed into court-ordered receivership for “restructuring and asset sale,” according to the company’s founder and former CEO.
Proove’s founder, Brian Meshkin, said in an interview on Thursday that he no longer works at Proove, which rang up $28 million in revenue last year. Meshkin blamed the company’s fall on investigative articles published by STAT last December and February. Those articles quoted experts who expressed deep doubts about the company’s scientific claims that it could predict a patient’s likelihood of becoming addicted to opioids. “Hogwash” was the assessment of Dr. Mary Jeanne Kreek, a leading researcher on genetic links to addiction at Rockefeller University.
STAT’s investigations also described business practices — including coercing patients to take unnecessary genetic tests — that former Proove employees and outside experts described as unethical and possibly illegal.
In June, agents from the FBI and Department of Health and Human Services agents raided Proove’s offices in Irvine, Calif. to collect truckloads of documents...
Related Articles
Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
Americans Are Paying Billions to Take Drugs That Don’t Work
Companies are increasingly...
By Sarah Kliff and Azeen Ghorayshi, The New York Times | 07.15.2024
By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News | 07.09.2024
A Netflix docuseries has put a spotlight on the unregulated world of sperm donation, particularly the lack of stopgap measures that might prevent donors who have been banned by one country from simply going elsewhere to donate more.
Released earlier...
By Amanda Becker and Shefali Luthra, The 19th | 07.08.2024
Image by Duke University Archives from Flickr
Republicans have adopted a slate of policy positions ahead of next week’s convention that does not call for a federal legislative abortion ban, but opens the door to establishing fetal personhood.
The Republican...