MyImmuneBank

Are you healthy?
This is a simple question but difficult to answer, because we have been looking it at a wrong angel: we have been measuring health by diagnosing diseases. That is like define happiness by listing all the miseries you do not have. Based on this logic, we may only discover that a person is healthy after all the lab tests come back negative for known diseases. Yet, “all healthy people are alike; each patient is sick in his own way.” What all healthy people have in common is that their immune system is adequately equipped to respond effectively to diseases occurring within a given environment. So, instead of diagnosing disease, at MyImmuneBank, we are focusing on evaluating immune strength, fortitude, experience, and maturity.

Our immune system, like our national defense, needs resources and has a large but still limited budget. One way to appraise a defense system is asking: (1) What is the total number of soldiers in the military? (2) How many soldiers are in active-duty and are well-trained? (3) How many soldiers are kept on reserve to deal with other potential challenges? By answering these questions, we may learn how our defense budget is being disbursed, therefore, know if we are capable of winning a war. Similarly, answering these questions about our immune system would provide a health status estimate without diagnosing specific diseases.

· Wellness Indexes are reported for T cell receptor beta chain repertoire NextGen Sequencing service, including: (1) Clonotype Index, or unique clonotype count, which answer the question of “how many soldiers” in the defense forces; (2) Diversity Index, which answer the question about “active-duty” forces by measuring the portion of activated immune cells; (3) Essential Index, which evaluate “reserves” by measuring if your immune system have enough resources to cover some essential elements.
· In addition, we provide an award winning clonotype frequency map that can be generated into a personalized art that you can display with different print media.

The Wellness Indexes service require purchasing a kit and submitting a fingertip blood sample using the collecting devices provided. You can log into your account after submitting a sample and see all your reports! You can also order a personalized art from the app.

You can take a sample as a routine check up, as a special episode when your health status changes, or as a “citizen scientist” to compare immune repertoires before and after a specific health intervention, such as running, quitting smoking, special diet, etc.

Service descriptions

Wellness Indexes. Analyzing one gene locus, the T cell receptor beta chain gene (TCRB) locus. Alpha/beta T lymphocytes are a special kind of immune cells that carrying out cellular immunity (cell to cell combat) to eliminate cells infected with bacteria or viruses or kill mutated cancerous cells. Our test, by analyzing T cell receptor beta chain repertoire, reports three Wellness Indexes including Clonotype Index, Diversity Index, and Essential Index. These values suggest the total fighting forces of alpha/beta T cells, those on “active duty”, and those on “reserves”, respectively. Health status is inferred not by detecting diseases, but by querying the balances or immune resources in the “Immune Bank”. The MIB testing is not designed to detecting specific diseases.

Furthermore, the MIB testing is NOT intended for use in the following manner:
• As a substitute for any kind of medical treatment;
• As a form of prenatal testing;
• As a means of determining predisposition for cancer, where test results may lead to any procedure or treatment that could cause morbidity or mortality to the user;
• To assess whether genetic variants are present that would affect a user’s ability to take and/or metabolize any drugs in any way;
• To look for the presence of deterministic, autosomal dominant variants.