• Complete Genomics Loses Staff, Delays Revolocity as BGI Seeks Support for BGISEQ-500

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Complete Genomics of Mountain View, Calif., is undergoing a big shakeup under the direction of its Shenzhen-based owner BGI, reorganizing as a research site developing assays for the BGISEQ-500 and cutting short the launch of its Revolocity clinical sequencing system.

    Nov 24, 2015

  • Mosquito Gene Drive Appears Successful in the Lab

    STAT | Scientists have used the CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing tool to create mosquitoes that block the malaria parasite instead of transmitting it - and rapidly spread their modified DNA to nearly all their descendants.

    Nov 23, 2015

  • Thermo Fisher Prepares for NGS Cancer Testing with Pharma Partners

    Bio-IT World | Thermo Fisher Scientific announced this week that it will be creating a next-generation sequencing test as a companion diagnostic in cases of non-small cell lung cancer, partnering with Novartis and Pfizer.

    Nov 20, 2015

  • Oxford Nanopore's Software Side

    Bio-IT World | Oxford Nanopore, creator of the handheld MinION DNA sequencer, recently revealed its first user-facing tool for genetic interpretation, a species identification workflow called What's in my Pot? The tool, designed by Oxford's software spinout Metrichor, hints at the company's ambitions to bring DNA analysis to a much wider audience, as the MinION broadens notions of who can perform sequencing and where.

    Nov 19, 2015

  • How Genetics Defines, and Redefines, Biological Sex

    Nature News | The idea of two sexes, divided neatly by X and Y chromosomes, is simplistic. Biologists are now finding a fascinating number and variety of ways genetics can defy the binary.

    Nov 19, 2015

  • Deep Genomics Closes Seed Round of $3.7m

    Bio-IT World | Deep Genomics this morning announced the closing of $3.7 million in seed financing. Funding was led by True Ventures of the Bay Area with participation from Bloomberg Beta and other global angel investors.

    Nov 18, 2015

  • Former Biogen R&D Chief Emerges at $80M Startup Pursuing Cancer Alzheimers

    Forbes | Doug Williams left one of biotechnology's biggest jobs, at Biogen, in July. Now we know why. Williams is now the founding CEO of Codiak Biosciences, a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup. The little company is announcing today it has raised $80 million in committed venture capital spread over two installments.

    Nov 17, 2015

  • NCBI Plans Genomics Hackathon

    NCBI News | In early January, NCBI will host a genomics hackathon with teams taking on network analysis of variants, structural variation, RNA-seq, streaming data and metadata, and more.

    Nov 16, 2015

  • Patients Reluctant to Share Health Data with Tech Companies

    MIT Technology Review | A survey finds that consumers are wary of giving their personal health information to insurers, pharma companies, government, and especially tech companies like Google, Apple and Facebook.

    Nov 16, 2015

  • Inside the Recruitment and Data Management Challenges of the Million Veterans Program

    STAT | Veterans are donating their blood to the VA as part of one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken to understand our DNA.

    Nov 12, 2015

  • WuXi NextCODE to Interpret Cancer Samples for UK 100,000 Genomes Project

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Genomics England, the state-owned company created to sequence 100,000 whole genomes of UK patients for health research, has announced that WuXi NextCODE will be its first Clinical Interpretation Partner in the field of cancer.

    Nov 12, 2015

  • DDN Launches Fast, Dense Storage Platform

    Bio-IT World | DataDirect Networks (DDN) announced a new storage platform this week: DDN SFA14K; the Texas Advanced Computing Center is the first announced deployment. The hybrid storage and hyper-converged platforms deliver fast, dense storage with more than 6 million IOPS and 60GB/sec in 4U with scalability to nearly 7PB of capacity in a single rack. 

    Nov 11, 2015

  • Cycle Offers Multiple Clouds in Single Dashboard, Awarded Patent

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Cycle Computing today announced a new version of its flagship product: CycleCloud. Version 5 is available immediately, and contains updates including a single dashboard for quickly and securely accessing and managing workloads on each of the world’s leading cloud service providers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Compute Engine.

    Nov 9, 2015

  • QIAGEN Releases GeneReader for Clinical Sequencing in Cancer

    Bio-IT World | Molecular diagnostics company QIAGEN has finally unveiled its DNA sequencer, the GeneReader, as a highly multiplexed clinical tool focused on somatic cancer, with full automation from sample preparation to variant interpretation.

    Nov 9, 2015

  • What's Going On in Craig Venter's Health Nucleus?

    STAT | Human Longevity, Craig Venter's latest company, has begun offering a strikingly comprehensive health scan featuring whole genome sequencing, microbiome analysis, and a series of imaging procedures. But many are skeptical any of this has real medical value.

    Nov 5, 2015

  • Verge Genomics Raises $4 Million with Help from Y Combinator

    TechCrunch | One of several biotechs recently backed by tech accelerator Y Combinator, Verge Genomics has closed a $4 million seed round to follow leads from its predictive algorithms for drug repurposing in neurological disease.

    Nov 4, 2015

  • MinION Sequencing Untangles RNA Transcripts in a Difficult Gene

    Bio-IT World | The Graveley lab at the University of Connecticut has demonstrated that the handheld MinION nanopore sequencer can distinguish between RNA isoforms in Dscam1, the most alternatively spliced gene known to science.

    Nov 3, 2015

  • IBM pumps up its hybrid-cloud muscle with Gravitant buy

    Computerworld | IBM bought Gravitant, a maker of brokerage software designed ease the purchase and management of software and services across mixed cloud platforms.

    Nov 3, 2015

  • Tute’s Knome-Powered Vision for an Integrated Genomics Vertical

    Bio-IT World  | Tute Genomics announced this morning that the company has acquired Knome, one of the earliest players in the consumer genomics space. The acquisition will further develop Tute’s genomics analysis pipeline in pursuit of an integrated genomics analysis product.

    Nov 2, 2015

  • Storify: Should Whole Genome Sequencing Be the Standard for Rare Disease?

    Bio-IT World | Elizabeth Worthey's comment that families affected by rare disease should push for whole genome sequencing has bioinformatics Twitter abuzz today, with a passionate and detailed debate about the best use of healthcare resources in the pursuit of a genetic diagnosis.

    Nov 2, 2015