• 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

  • End of the Line for Knome with Acquisition by Tute Genomics

    Xconomy | After eight years, more than $20 million raised, and an assortment of different business plans, Massachusetts genomics firm Knome has been acquired by tiny Tute Genomics of Utah.

    Nov 2, 2015

  • October News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product releases from around the industry, including a CDC test of the Edico DRAGEN processor and new CRISPR partnerships.

    Oct 30, 2015

  • A Moore’s Law Mystery

    The Last Word On Nothing | Was Moore's Law originally developed as a marketing ploy for Intel?

    Oct 30, 2015

  • Direct Genomics' New Clinical Sequencer Revives a Forgotten DNA Technology

    Bio-IT World | At Direct Genomics in Shenzhen, He Jiankui is bringing back the sequencing technology of the defunct Helicos Biosciences to build a new DNA sequencer for the clinic, promising targeted diagnostic tests with minimal sample preparation and low input requirements.

    Oct 29, 2015

  • BGI Retools Complete Genomics Technology for Its New High-Throughput Benchtop Sequencer

    Bio-IT World | The BGISEQ-500, using a dramatically reengineered version of Complete Genomics' "DNA nanoball" sequencing, is designed to compete with Illumina's NextSeq instruments on both price and throughput — at least in the Chinese markets where it is being made available next year.

    Oct 28, 2015

  • TGAC Unleashes DRAGEN to Accelerate Genomics Workflows

    HPCwire | Accelerating genomics analysis remains one of the toughest challenges in life science research. All manner of optimizations are in use - disk streaming, op

    Oct 28, 2015