• Barcelona Research Institutions Launch Joint Program on Evolutionary Medical Genomics

    Bio-IT World | Three research institutions in Barcelona have teamed up to launch the world’s first Joint Program on Evolutionary Medical Genomics. The initiative, launched last month at an inaugural symposium in Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB), is a collaboration between the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), and the Institut de Biologia Evolutiva

    Dec 3, 2024

  • Follow the Money: Seaport Therapeutics Glyph Platform, Pathos AI Expansion, More

    Bio-IT World | Seaport nets funds for its Glyph technology platform; Pathos AI plans to accelerate its AI-powered drug development platform; Alentis Therapeutics pursues antibody drug conjugates; and more.

    Nov 26, 2024

  • Answer ALS, Cedars-Sinai Collaboration, Single-Cell Protein Profiling, ChapsVision Acquires Sinequa, More

    Bio-IT World | Answer ALS and Cedars-Sinai have announced the completed availability of the largest ALS patient-based induced pluripotent stem cell and bio data repository; Scale Biosciences and Revvity’s business, BioLegend, announced the availability of a first-of-its-kind TotalSeq Phenocyte single-cell protein profiling solution that supports customers by more easily identifying and characterizing rare cell subtypes; ChapsVision has acquired Sinequa; and more.

    Nov 25, 2024

  • How Digital Chemistry Will Improve Cross-Functional Collaboration In The Biopharma Industry

    Bio-IT World | Digital chemistry is the term given to recent developments in using digital control and big data approaches for designing molecules, optimizing and controlling chemical reactions, and performing complex chemical processes under digital control with sensor feedback. A fundamental development in digital chemistry is the evolution of the concept of chemputation, which allows chemical reactions to be easily done robotically using a general purpose programming language for chemical synthesis.

    Nov 22, 2024

  • ‘Secret Shares’ of Patient Health Data Enable Secure Multiparty Research

    Bio-IT World | Scientists in Europe collaborated on the first international-level clinical study using secure multiparty computation (MPC), which enabled cross-border cooperation without sharing any personalized health data. The cryptographic method traces back to the late 1970s but has been “severely underused” up until now because it’s computationally complex and few data security experts are familiar with the technology.

    Nov 20, 2024

  • Recursion, Novo Nordisk Release New Chemistry Foundation Model

    Bio-IT World | In a paper published last week in Nature Communications, teams from Recursion and Novo Nordisk created a new foundation model for chemistry called MolE. Benchmarked for absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) using the Therapeutic Data Commons, MolE outperformed previous models.

    Nov 19, 2024

  • Much Like a Crime Scene, Cancer’s Evolution Can be Reconstructed

    Bio-IT World | Investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine have combined several powerful technologies to reconstruct how cancer spreads from the prostate to metastatic sites elsewhere in the body. Bioluminescence imaging, CRISPR/Cas9-based barcoding, and innovative computational methods for tracing the movement of cancer from tissue to tissue were used in creating a roadmap revealing the small number of aggressive cells that seed cancer’s often deadly migration.

    Nov 14, 2024

  • Blueprint of the Human Spliceosome Could Help Find Cancer’s Achilles’ Heel

    Bio-IT World | The spliceosome, the cellular machinery that catalyzes the process of splicing in genes, was discovered nearly five decades ago and has been successfully leveraged in the development of therapies for rare diseases such as spinal muscular dystrophy where concerns about side effects tend to be secondary to correcting the underlying pathology. The question now is how to move the strategy to more complex diseases involving more than a single gene and splicing mutation.

    Nov 13, 2024

  • New Diagnostic Tool for Identifying the Effects of Antifibrotic Therapy in Breast Cancer

    Bio-IT World | In recent research, scientists at the University of Arizona have developed a diagnostic tool, the MeCo Score, which evaluates metastatic risk in early-stage breast cancer by analyzing how cancer cells respond to the stiffness of surrounding tissue. This tool leverages RNA sequencing data from tumor samples to identify a "mechanical conditioning" (MeCo) signature, giving insights into cancer cell adaptations within the tumor microenvironment.

    Nov 12, 2024

  • Foundations for Change: A Framework for Transforming R&D Outcomes With AI

    Bio-IT World | For AI and data-driven drug discovery to have a tangible impact on R&D success, a change in the culture is as important as any investment at a data, model, and validation level. Until quite recently, the perceived value of AI in drug discovery and development failed to match the hype.

    Nov 8, 2024

  • PacBio’s Pink Desktop Platform, $500 Genome Chemistry

    Bio-IT World | This week at the American Society of Human Genetics meeting, Pacific Biosciences unveiled both its new SPRQ chemistry—pronounced “spark”— and its newest sequencing platform, Vega, a desktop, long-read sequencer with all the compute on board. Also it’s pink.

    Nov 7, 2024

  • New Data Suggests a More Expansive View of Heart Health Lipids

    Bio-IT World | The traditional LDL and HDL cholesterol tests may soon be obsolete as new research suggests they provide an incomplete view of heart health compared to other lipid molecules circulating in the blood. This shift stems from a recent study led by Dr. Cristina Legido-Quigley, a systems medicine expert at King’s College London and Steno Diabetes Centre, which analyzed lipids in children with obesity.

    Nov 4, 2024

  • AI Points to Drug Repurposing Opportunities for Diseases Without Cures

    Bio-IT World | Harvard scientists have succeeded in using artificial intelligence (AI) to identify promising drug candidates for diseases for which there are no examples of successful treatment. The graph foundation model, known as TxGNN, opens untold opportunities to repurpose drugs for the thousands of diseases afflicting small populations and exacting a huge toll in terms of both economics and human suffering.

    Oct 31, 2024

  • New 10x Instruments, Merck Acquires Modifi Biosciences, New Immunogenicity Bioanalysis Features, Partnerships, More

    Bio-IT World | Modifi Biosciences has been acquired by Merck; Sapio Sciences announces the addition of new immunogenicity bioanalysis features to its industry-leading lab informatics platform; and more.

    Oct 30, 2024

  • Follow the Money: Small Molecule Solutions AI Platform, MIT, Basecamp Research Collaboration, More

    Bio-IT World | Terray Therapeutics will enhance their integrated AI platform, tNova, which identifies and optimizes novel small molecule solutions to the most complex problems; Basecamp Research, in collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. David R. Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, plans to advance their data collection and strengthen their AI capabilities; and more.

    Oct 29, 2024

  • AI Is Nothing Without An AI-Ready Data Strategy

    Bio-IT World | Applied artificial intelligence (AI) is already transforming drug discovery research and development, accelerating the journey from lab to lifesaving therapies, and both the reality and the hype are very well known. Less obvious—almost 90% of the iceberg—is the critical role played by data.

    Oct 25, 2024

  • Cleveland Clinic Researchers Find Hope in Immune Cells’ Reaction to Immunotherapy

    Bio-IT World | There is much we still don’t know about the relationship between immune cells and cancer cells and how they interact and influence each other over the course of immune activating cancer therapies. Researchers at Cleveland Clinic are exploring these relationships and reported their results last month in Nature Medicine.

    Oct 23, 2024

  • Illumina’s New Desktop Sequencing Series Is Fast, Cheap, Simple

    Bio-IT World | Illumina unveiled its MiSeq i100 Series of sequencing systems last week during an online customer event, comprising two new benchtop instruments: MiSeq i100 and MiSeq i100 Plus Systems. The MiSeq i100 will be available to ship globally in 2025.

    Oct 17, 2024

  • Pistoia Alliance Research Finds Concerns on Security, Barriers, More

    Bio-IT World | As artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) become increasingly prevalent in the industry, there are still several concerns about its implementation. Mainly, how safe is it to use AI? What measures can be taken to increase and reinforce security? The Pistoia Alliance decided to find out.

    Oct 16, 2024

  • ‘Heretical’ Idea for Treating Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Moves Forward

    Bio-IT World | The clinical utility of treating cancer by modulating the estrogen receptor could radically and quickly expand, initially for patients with triple-negative breast cancer but potentially thereafter to those with melanoma and cancers found in the colon, lung, head, and neck. Hope springs from findings emerging from the lab of Professor Donald McDonnell, Ph.D., at Duke University School of Medicine, where the field of oral selective estrogen down-regulators was pioneered nearly two decades ago.

    Oct 15, 2024