• 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

  • What Comes Next for Direct-to-Consumer Genetics?

    Bio-IT World | After receiving FDA clearance for a single carrier screening test this February, 23andMe has promised to release a new health product to its customers later this year. But regulations are sure to change the types of genetic tests available on the direct-to-consumer market — and lead some to look for alternative ways to expand public access to useful genomic information.

    Jul 16, 2015

  • The Case for Theranos

    Forbes | Matthew Herper talks to Elizabeth Holmes and the organizations partnering with her company Theranos, to check out the evidence for her claims to radically reduce the price and burden of blood tests.

    Jul 15, 2015

  • Paul Allen Foundation Grants $7m in Alzheimer's Grants

    Bio-IT World News Brief | The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation announced five Allen Distinguished Investigator (ADI) grants to teams of researchers with projects that will open new and innovative avenues of research in Alzheimer’s disease. The projects are funded at a total of $7 million over three years.

    Jul 14, 2015

  • IBM Nvidia Energy Department form a supercomputer super team

    CNET | Two supercomputing centers of excellence revolve around making sure applications can take advantage of compute horsepower and gathering feedback from developers, engineers and scientists.

    Jul 14, 2015

  • Dr. Lee Hoods scientific wellness startup Arivale raises $36M to improve health through genetics

    GeekWire | Lee Hood's new startup, Arivale, raised $36 million yesterday from Arch Venture Partners and Polaris Partners. The company's total funding is now at $40 million.

    Jul 14, 2015

  • 21st Century Cures Act Passes House Now Must Navigate Senate

    Xconomy | The U.S. House of Representatives took a big step this morning toward major changes in the federal government's relationship to biomedical research, funding and regulation.

    Jul 10, 2015

  • Juno Revs Armored CAR For Ovarian Cancer Trial

    Xconomy | Juno Therapeutics has built remarkable momentum and is about to launch the first trial in humans of engineered T cells.

    Jul 10, 2015

  • Biogen R and D Chief Doug Williams Leaves to Run New Cancer Startup

    Xconomy | Biogen's top research and development executive Doug Williams is leaving the company this month to take the helm at a startup that doesn't yet have a name.

    Jul 10, 2015

  • Pistoia Alliance Launches Startup Challenge

    Bio-IT World | The Pistoia Alliance has launched a business plan contest that will ask startup companies from around the world to develop new ideas to lower the barriers to innovation in life sciences R&D. The Pistoia Alliance President’s Startup Challenge 2015 invites small and medium enterprises to compete for cash prizes and expert mentorship from a senior industry figure drawn from the Pistoia Alliance membership.

    Jul 9, 2015

  • Sequencing the genome creates so much data we don’t know what to do with it

    Washington Post | Scientists say genomics will end up being the biggest data hog, set to surpass astronomy, particle physics -- even YouTube.

    Jul 8, 2015

  • GlaxoSmithKline Searching For Hit Drugs Pours $95M Into DNA Dark Matter

    Forbes | GlaxoSmithKline is investing $95 million in a nonprofit research center in Seattle called the Altius Institute for Biomedical Sciences, focusing on the "dark matter" of the genome.

    Jul 8, 2015

  • HealthSeq Study Offers Healthy New Yorkers Whole Genome Sequencing

    Bio-IT World | Following on studies like ClinSeq and MedSeq, Mount Sinai School of Medicine's HealthSeq project is tracking patient responses to genome-wide testing, in an effort to extend these studies to a more diverse population and include non-health-related results like ancestry and physical trait information.

    Jul 7, 2015

  • Grappling with Genomic Sequencing of Newborns

    MIT Technology Review | The BabySeq project in Boston has begun collecting data to quantify the risks and benefits of DNA sequencing at birth.

    Jul 2, 2015

  • June News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product briefs from around the industry, including landmarks on the second anniversary of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, and the commercial launch of 10X Genomics' GemCode platform.

    Jul 1, 2015

  • Clone-Free, Single-Molecule Genome Assembly Illuminates Structural Variation

    Bio-IT World | A large collaboration led by scientists at the Icahn Institute has combined PacBio sequencing and BioNano optical maps to produce the most contiguous human genome ever assembled without cloning steps, bringing a new degree of resolution to studies of complex structural variants.

    Jun 30, 2015

  • Celgene To Pay $1B For A Big Piece of Juno and T Cell Therapies

    Xconomy | It seemed only a matter of time. One of biotech's most aggressive deal makers, Celgene has struck a wide-ranging, billion-dollar partnership with Juno Therapeutics.

    Jun 30, 2015

  • #TCGC15: Databases, Genomics, and Making Clinical Sequencing Work

    Bio-IT World News Brief | The fourth annual Clinical Genome Conference wrapped up last week in San Francisco. It was a packed three days of short courses, presentations, and discussion that spilled over the time slots and into the evening. Thankfully, much of it ended up on Twitter.

    Jun 29, 2015

  • Report from the Festival of Genomics

    Bio-IT World | A new event held this week in Boston, the Festival of Genomics, aimed to engage the public with this burgeoning science, while emphasizing to scientists the importance of data sharing and of integrating DNA data with meaningful health information in order to deliver on the promises of genomic medicine.

    Jun 26, 2015