• The Tsetse Fly and the Test for Genomics in Africa

    Bio-IT World | In 2004, the International Glossina Genome Initiative set out to sequence the genome of the tsetse fly, Glossina morsitans, Africa's most unique public health threat. Though the project took over a decade to complete, its legacy is a model for building local capacity for cutting-edge science in African institutions.

    Aug 6, 2015

  • FDA Leans on DNAnexus for Platform to Evaluate Bioinformatics

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Diagnostics based on next-generation sequencing have forced the FDA to bend some of its standards for proving the analytical and clinical value of new medical tests before they come to market — and a new online platform built with DNAnexus, called precisionFDA, will now formalize and refine some of the new approaches the agency has taken to deal with computational pipelines in genomics.

    Aug 6, 2015

  • Illumina Announces Three New Companies for Genomics Accelerator

    Xconomy | Illumina has announced the second class of its accelerator program, with applications in infectious disease diagnostics, sequencing of urine samples, and even wine making.

    Aug 5, 2015

  • Room for a New Megacompany in Rare Disease?

    FierceBiotech | Shire, the Dublin-headquartered pharma company increasingly reliant on its rare disease portfolio, is making an aggressive move to acquire the newly spun-off biotech company Baxalta.

    Aug 4, 2015

  • Neanderthals Had Outsize Effect on Human Biology

    Nature News | Genome wide association studies, coupled with experiments in the lab, suggest that the small percentage of human DNA contributed by other hominid species like Neanderthals and Denisovans may have large phenotypic effects.

    Aug 3, 2015

  • Obama Announces National Strategic Computing Initiative

    Bio-IT World Brief | Yesterday President Obama has signed an executive order creating the National Strategic Computing Initiative. The Initiative aims to bring together several government agencies including the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation to pursue exascale computing.

    Aug 2, 2015

  • July News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product briefs from around the industry, including Deep Genomins' DNA binding analytics and White House announcements about the Precision Medicine Initiative.

    Jul 29, 2015

  • Exclusive Genomics pioneer Jun Wang on his new AI venture

    Nature News & Comment | Visionary leader of China's BGI tells Nature why he is stepping down to build a health-monitoring system based on a million genomes.

    Jul 29, 2015

  • Amazon takes on MySQL with Aurora

    Computerworld | Going forward, Amazon will position Aurora as its default database service, a high-performance alternative to MySQL.

    Jul 28, 2015

  • Biogen Looks Vulnerable After Stock Sell-Off

    BostonGlobe.com | Cambridge biotechnology giant Biogen Inc. may have to make a bold move to reassure investors -- buying back shares or snapping up a smaller company -- or it could become a takeover target itself, some analysts warned Monday.

    Jul 28, 2015

  • Yaron Turpaz on Human Longevity's Big Plans

    Bio-IT World | Human Longevity's vision is grand: sequence 100,000 human genomes a year and "change the way medicine is practiced by helping to shift to a more preventive, genomic-based medicine model.” Yaron Turpaz, HLI’s Chief Information Officer, talks about the first year’s progress and the kind of knowledgebase HLI is building.   

    Jul 27, 2015

  • Programming an Abundant Human Gut Microbe

    Bio-IT World | Members of MIT's Synthetic Biology Center have successfully reengineered the genome of Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron to take on new functions inside the gut of a mouse in response to changes in the mouse's diet — the first example of implementing these "genetic circuits" in a bacterium that is highly abundant in the human microbiome.

    Jul 24, 2015

  • Jun Wang, Chief Executive of BGI, Steps Down

    Nature News & Comment | Jun Wang is leaving his post as chief executive of the Chinese genomics powerhouse BGI, to pursue research in artificial intelligence.

    Jul 24, 2015

  • Converged IT Summit: Exploring Compute Architecture for Life Sciences

    Bio-IT World | If you missed the lightening round that is Chris Dagdigian’s annual Trends from the Trenches talk at Bio-IT World this year, you’ll have another opportunity to catch up at BioTeam’s first Converged IT Summit in San Francisco this September 9-10. I’m sure Dags will have plenty new to say in his keynote presentation, and he’s not the only one. The Summit agenda features two solid days of leaders who are deploying scientific computing infrastructure for life sciences and healthcare.

    Jul 23, 2015

  • Converge or Be Purged: IDMP Product Standardization Deadline Looms

    Bio-IT World Contributed Commentary | The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has mandated that all life sciences organizations in Europe and those selling products in Europe demonstrate compliance with the Identification of Medicinal Products (IDMP) standards by July 1, 2016. It’s now imperative for IT and business groups to begin formulating a strategy to not just comply with IDMP, but to embrace it as an impetus for change within the organization. 

    Jul 23, 2015

  • Google lures businesses to Nearline with 100 PB of free cloud storage

    Computerworld | Google on Thursday had its sights fixed firmly on Amazon as it launched its new, low-cost Nearline cloud storage service out of beta and into general availability.

    Jul 23, 2015

  • 23andMe Shuts Down App that Uses Genetic Information to Screen Access

    Bio-IT World | 23andMe today shut down an app built with its API that purported to enable web developers to “restrict access to your site based on traits including sex, ancestry, disease susceptibility [stet], and arbitrary characteristics associated with single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a person's genotype.”

    Jul 22, 2015

  • Meet Deep Genomics a start-up bringing the power of deep learning to genomics

    Washington Post | A painful chapter in his life motivates a researcher to bring deep learning to genomics.

    Jul 22, 2015

  • New Funding for Oxford Nanopore as PromethION Approaches

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Oxford Nanopore Technologies announced today that it has raised an additional $109 million in funding for product development and to ramp up manufacturing, coinciding with open applications to join an early access program for the company's first high-throughput instrument.

    Jul 21, 2015

  • AncestryDNA, Calico Investigate Human Heredity of Lifespan

    Bio-IT World | AncestryDNA and Google’s Calico today announced an effort to investigate human heredity of lifespan. The two will analyze and investigate the role of genetics and its influences in families experiencing unusual longevity using Ancestry’s proprietary databases, tools and algorithms. Calico will then focus its efforts to develop and commercialize any potential therapeutics that emerge from the analysis. 

    Jul 21, 2015