I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#2MPC for Multi-Party Computation, not for Model Predictive Control.
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#3MPC for Multi-Party Computation, not for Model Predictive Control.
Nowadays people would have guessed it was Model Context Protocol.
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#4In genetics the end user is never the consumer. You have to collect blood, prepare it, sequence it. These are all highly specialised steps in which something will and can go wrong, and that’s why typically a hospital carries them out. That’s before even getting the device to do sequencing. The cheapest nanopore comes you at a couple ten thousand euros. Given the premise your work strikes me as oddly theoretical. Who is that mystery home DNA lab that needs decentralised private compute?
Also, and funnily enough, for much of the genomic pipelines to run (eg a paternity test or a cancer test), a home computer is sufficient. Again, of course, you would need proper medical training to read, interpret and judge the results, which is why a hospital does it… so what problem exactly are you solving?
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#5In genetics the end user is never the consumer. You have to collect blood, prepare it, sequence it. These are all highly specialised steps in which something will and can go wrong, and that’s why typically a hospital carries them out. That’s before even getting the device to do sequencing. The cheapest nanopore comes you at a couple ten thousand euros. Given the premise your work strikes me as oddly theoretical. Who…
https://www.the-odin.com/
$599 for 30x coverage sequencing of any whole genome: https://www.the-odin.com/whole-genome-sequencing-30x/
Or purchase the equipment you need to DIY.
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#6> Most genomic studies begin by asking participants to upload one of the most identifying and irrevocable pieces of data they own, their DNA.
I'm curious what the author means by "asking participants to upload ... their DNA", because I am not aware of any study that asked participants to do that.
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#7In genetics the end user is never the consumer. You have to collect blood, prepare it, sequence it. These are all highly specialised steps in which something will and can go wrong, and that’s why typically a hospital carries them out. That’s before even getting the device to do sequencing. The cheapest nanopore comes you at a couple ten thousand euros. Given the premise your work strikes me as oddly theoretical. Who…
There are many motivations for consumer genomics and they might pick up further.
https://vishakh.blog/2025/07/08/using-mpc-for-anonymous-and-...
If you look at a previous experiment we did, the costs for getting genotyped are pretty moderate (Through our Explorer product (https://explorer.monadicdna.com/) we let people glean information about their genome using GWAS Catalog data.
This PoC addresses the next step, i.e. how to keep genetic data private at the user level while still allowing aggregate studies to happen, with or without financial incentives.
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#8> Most genomic studies begin by asking participants to upload one of the most identifying and irrevocable pieces of data they own, their DNA. I'm curious what the author means by "asking participants to upload ... their DNA", because I am not aware of any study that asked participants to do that.
You're right, most analyses are done using biobanks, etc right now. The sentence is an oversimplification but people still implicitly contribute their data to insecure and centralized sources.
If we can enable people to get sequenced not just when they are sick but for altruistic or financial reasons without leaking their DNA data, we could unlock much bigger datasets than currently available, especially from populations that are underrepresented or ignored.
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#9In genetics the end user is never the consumer. You have to collect blood, prepare it, sequence it. These are all highly specialised steps in which something will and can go wrong, and that’s why typically a hospital carries them out. That’s before even getting the device to do sequencing. The cheapest nanopore comes you at a couple ten thousand euros. Given the premise your work strikes me as oddly theoretical. Who…
https://www.the-odin.com/ $599 for 30x coverage sequencing of any whole genome: https://www.the-odin.com/whole-genome-sequencing-30x/ Or purchase the equipment you need to DIY.
That's a kit for sample collection. You would then ship off your sample to the company in question, and they would do the actual sequencing, and then send the DNA data and genetic variants they've inferred back to you. I think that defeats what the article author is trying to accomplish, since you still share your entire genome with a third party.
The actual instruments used by that company are a whole lot more expensive, and you have to buy reagents as well: https://www.machinio.com/illumina/dna-sequencers
Re: I Built a Private Genomics Study with Stoffel MPC
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.the-odin.com/ $599 for 30x coverage sequencing of any whole genome: https://www.the-odin.com/whole-genome-sequencing-30x/ Or purchase the equipment you need to DIY.
That's a kit for sample collection. You would then ship off your sample to the company in question, and they would do the actual sequencing, and then send the DNA data and genetic variants they've inferred back to you. I think that defeats what the article author is trying to accomplish, since you still share your entire genome with a third party. The actual instruments used by that company are a whole lot more expen…
We have shown that we can batch user samples and then send them anonymously to the lab. Users can then use an MPC protocol to securely fetch their data without losing anonymity.
We plan to roll out a product called Batcher which does this soon.