• Genomics England Names Four Finalist Companies to Begin Interpretation

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Genomics England today announced four finalist companies and one alternate that will begin working on the interpretation of the genomes of the first 8,000 patients participating in the 100,000 Genomes Project.  Congenica and Omicia will work in rare diseases, Nanthealth in cancer, and Wuxi Nextcode in both rare disease and cancer for this stage of the project. Lockheed Martin in partnership with Cypher Genomics is the alternate.

    Jun 3, 2015

  • BaseHealth Opens Its Genomic Health Engine to Outside Developers

    Bio-IT World | BaseHealth, an Illumina-associated company using genomic data to provide patients with personalized health recommendations, is shifting to a more behind-the-scenes model, releasing an open API to integrate its own analysis engine into third-party apps and health platforms.

    Jun 2, 2015

  • Invitae Launches Direct-to-Consumer Pricing

    Bio-IT World | Invitae Corporation today announced a patient pay price for its full menu of genetic tests. For $475 per indication, patients can pay for their own genetic tests if insurance coverage is not available. The price covers all of Invitae’s offerings in cancer, cardiology, neurology, pediatric genetics, hematology and other rare conditions

    Jun 1, 2015

  • May News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product briefs from around the industry, including a suite of new proteomics and lipidomics solutions from SCIEX, and new efforts at the Broad Institute to understand the mechanisms of cancer drug resistance.

    Jun 1, 2015

  • Google cloud strategy focuses on analyzing big data

    Computerworld | Google may not have caught up to Amazon in the cloud market, but that's OK, according to a Google executive. The company is heading in a slightly different direction with cloud computing that involves helping customers analyze their data.

    Jun 1, 2015

  • Definiens Launches Biomarker Datafication Services

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Definiens today launched a new suite of Biomarker Datafication Services for oncology clinical development programs. The package provides image analysis screening of tissue samples for exploratory screening, pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics, and companion diagnostic development.

    May 29, 2015

  • PacBio Aims for Haplotyped Whole Genome Assemblies in Partnership with RainDance

    Bio-IT World | Months after 10X Genomics came to market with a platform for reassembling 100-kilobase DNA fragments with an Illumina sequencer, Pacific Biosciences and RainDance Technologies have teamed up on their own barcoded long read solution that they say could outperform 10X on virtually every count.

    May 29, 2015

  • Strand LS Expands Cancer Profiling Service

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Strand Life Sciences announced an expanded StrandAdvantage pan-cancer genomic profiling service. The new version of StrandAdvantage will include a panel that examines 152 genes and pathways known to be impacted by existing targeted solid tumor therapies plus additional chemotherapeutic toxicity and resistance data.

    May 28, 2015

  • Juno Therapeutics Partners with Editas Medicine on CRISPR-Engineered Cancer Immunotherapies

    Bio-IT World | Biotech funding must be hot indeed when an 18-month-old immunotherapy company can pledge hundreds of millions to an 18-month-old genome editing company, but there's plenty of promise combining CAR T therapy with CRISPR technology — as rivals Novartis and Intellia Therapeutics made clear when they forged their own partnership this January.

    May 27, 2015

  • QIAGEN Launches NGS Clinical Insights Platform

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Yesterday afternoon QIAGEN announced the commercial launch of QIAGEN Clinical Insight (QCI), a bioinformatics content and software platform for clinical testing labs to interpret and report on genomic variants identified in next-generation sequencing (NGS). The first two supported applications for the bioinformatics platform are in oncology, for somatic and hereditary cancer testing. 

    May 27, 2015

  • New CLARITY Challenge Open to Entries, to Tackle Undiagnosed Diseases

    Clinical Informatics News | Boston Children’s Hospital is launching CLARITY Undiagnosed, a $25,000 competition to identify molecular diagnoses for five families with as-yet undiagnosed conditions. The Challenge kicks off in conjunction with a documentary film tracing the journeys of the patients and—possibly—the teams. Teams have until June 11 to register

    May 21, 2015

  • Genome in a Bottle Uncapped

    Bio-IT World | As the Genome in a Bottle Consortium and the National Institute of Standards and Technology announce the first reference DNA samples as trusted standards for genomic sequencing, the FDA weighs a regulatory role for the new reference material.

    May 21, 2015

  • Schizophrenia Genomics Study Looks for Somatic Mosaicism in Brain Cells

    Bio-IT World | The Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) announced a 5-year, $10.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support a first-of-its-kind multi-site, interdisciplinary project to research potentially non-inherited genetic causes of schizophrenia. By identifying the root biological origins now, more precise and effective therapies can be developed later.

    May 20, 2015

  • Celgene to Use Cypher Genomics’ Data Analytics in Drug Development

    Xconomy | Under a collaboration announced today, San Diego-based Cypher Genomics said it would use its biomarker discovery service to help New Jersey's Celgene identify key genetic variants among patients who respond well to specific drugs.

    May 20, 2015

  • Robert Gentleman on His Goals for Drug Discovery at 23andMe

    Bio-IT World | Robert Gentleman’s goal is to “bring bioinformatics and computational drug discovery to complement the really strong genetics” already at 23andMe. He spoke with Bio-IT World about open science at a for-profit venture, the challenges of drug discovery, and what’s left to find via SNP chips.

    May 19, 2015

  • AWS upgrades highlight growing focus on cloud management

    Computerworld | Amazon Web Services is hoping better management tools will convince enterprises to move more applications to the cloud, but getting their internal management processes right is even more important than anything the vendor can offer.

    May 19, 2015

  • Bluebird Regulators Map Out Approval Plan For Gene Therapy

    Xconomy | One of gene therapy's major unanswered questions is just what it'll take to convince U.S. regulators to approve one of these treatments.

    May 19, 2015

  • Can We Identify Every Kind of Cell in the Body

    MIT Technology Review | With new tools to isolate individual cells and profile their genetic signatures, researchers are undertaking a microscopic quest to find out what we're really made of.

    May 18, 2015

  • Michael J. Fox Foundation Brings Parkinson's Data to tranSMART

    Bio-IT World | The Michael J. Fox Foundation, dedicated to driving basic research in Parkinson's disease, received a special Judges' Prize at this year's Bio-IT World Best Practices Awards for its work implementing the tranSMART platform for data sharing and analysis, including innovative programs like a patient registry and integration with studies of other neurodegenerative diseases.

    May 15, 2015

  • Oxford Nanopore Announces Auto Sample Prep, New Chips, Pay-As-You-Go Pricing

    Bio-IT World | Clive Brown’s Oxford Nanopore took over our Twitter feed on Thursday afternoon with news coming out of the London Calling event (#nanoporeconf). Many in attendance (and watching the Twitter feed) called the announcements “game-changing” and likened the atmosphere to Apple’s iPhone announcement in 2007. 

    May 14, 2015