• New York’s Chief Medical Examiner Seeks to Lead in DNA Research

    New York Times | Dr. Barbara Sampson was named New York's chief medical examiner late last year, becoming the first woman to head the office as it seeks to right itself after high-profile mistakes.

    Feb 10, 2015

  • A $34 Smartphone Gadget That Can Detect HIV in 15 Minutes

    WIRED | When it comes to high-risk, infectious diseases, early detection can make all the difference in getting ill patients some much-needed treatment. In some cases, it may even help stem an outbreak. This becomes incredibly critical in the developing world, where there are fewer resources to go around.

    Feb 10, 2015

  • Roche Acquires German Genetic Data Company

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Roche has added another company to its Roche Sequencing Unit. Signature Diagnostics AG, a privately held company based in Potsdam, Germany, will be joining other recent Roche acquisitions Bina Technologies and Genia Technologies.

    Feb 9, 2015

  • One Codex and Microbiology's Search Problem

    Bio-IT World | Reference Genomics, one of the first biotech startups funded by Silicon Valley's famous seed accelerator Y Combinator, is trying to revamp how microbial geneticists search through large reference databases of genomes with its online platform One Codex.

    Feb 9, 2015

  • Among New York Subway’s Millions of Riders a Study Finds Many Mystery Microbes

    New York Times | Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College mapped DNA found in New York's subway system, finding that almost half the genetic material did not match any known organism.

    Feb 6, 2015

  • NHGRI Updates Patient Consent Guidance for the Precision Medicine Age

    Bio-IT World | The National Human Genome Research Institute has announced an update to its Informed Consent Resource, to reflect its new preference for obtaining the "broadest possible sharing permissions" for genomic data as studies increasingly rely on very large patient cohorts to understand personal health risks.

    Feb 4, 2015

  • PeerJ Launches PeerJ Computer Science

    Bio-IT World | Today, PeerJ Computer Science opens its digital doors for the first preprint submissions. Bio-IT World spoke to Jason Hoyt, Co-founder and CEO; and Peter Binfield, Co-founder and Publisher of PeerJ and PeerJ Computer Science about their goals for the new journal. 

    Feb 3, 2015

  • A National Push for Shared Clinical Data

    New York Times | In the wake of President Obama's proposal for a coordinated Precision Medicine Initiative, Gina Kolata writes that the program's real promise is not mass sequencing or data collection, but a database architecture that would allow patient information from multiple research projects to be smoothly combined.

    Feb 3, 2015

  • January News Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product releases from around the industry, including new analysis technology for Sequenom's non-invasive prenatal tests.

    Feb 3, 2015

  • A New Beginning for Semiconductor Sequencing

    Bio-IT World | Semiconductor sequencing, the basis for the Ion Torrent line of whole genome sequencers, has been a bit of a flop on the market, but the technology's inventor Chris Toumazou is betting big on miniaturization at his company DNA Electronics — starting anew with point-of-care tests for infectious disease.

    Feb 2, 2015

  • Obama Announces $215m Precision Medicine Investment for NIH, FDA

    Bio-IT World | President Obama will outline this morning his proposed investments to improve health and treat disease through precision medicine. The president will set out a $215m plan to build infrastructure needed to accelerate discovery in precision medicine, and includes funding for NIH and the FDA. 

    Jan 30, 2015

  • A New Initiative on Precision Medicine

    New England Journal of Medicine | Francis Collins and Harold Varmus discuss the President's Personalized Medicine Initiative.

    Jan 30, 2015

  • BGI Releases Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing Results

    Bio-IT World | BGI published the results of its non-invasive prenatal test, the NIFTY, this month in Ultrasound Obstetrics and Gynecology. The study tracked the clinical performance of the test, in nearly 147,000 pregnancies. The results showed high sensitivity and specificity and no significant difference between high-risk and low-risk pregnant women.

    Jan 29, 2015

  • Humbled Myriad Caves on BRCA Patents

    Bio-IT World News Brief | The long courtroom fights are at long last coming to an end as Myriad Genetics has announced it will settle its complex web of suits and countersuits and end claims to ownership of certain genetic testing targets and methods.

    Jan 28, 2015

  • Exosome Dx Aiming to Commercialize Liquid Biopsies Seeks 25M

    Xconomy | Cambridge, MA-based Exosome Diagnostics aims to raise $25 million, on top of the $27 million in Series B funding it raised last March. Exosome would use the cash to launch its first two products: a blood-based test for lung cancer, and a urine test for prostate cancer.

    Jan 28, 2015

  • Google Biogen Seek Reasons for Advance of Multiple Sclerosis

    Bloomberg | Google Inc., expanding its foray into medical research, will join multiple sclerosis drugmaker Biogen Idec Inc. to study environmental and biological contributors to the debilitating disease's progression.

    Jan 27, 2015

  • Claritas Announces $15m Funding Round

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Claritas Genomics announced today that it has secured $15 million in capital for its Series B round to expand its commercial operations, launch new next generation sequencing-based tests for diagnosis of pediatric genetic disorders and continue to build its network of clinical pediatric disease experts. 

    Jan 26, 2015

  • Yeast as a Model for Neurodegenerative Disease?

    Xconomy | Yumanity, a well-connected drug discovery startup, plans to play the long game in drug development by using yeast models in deep phenotypic screens to study neurological diseases based on protein misfolding.

    Jan 26, 2015

  • Appistry Launches CloudDx Translational from NIH Tool

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Appistry today launched Appistry CloudDx Translational, a “sister product” to the CloudDx platform launched last June, now renamed CloudDx Clinical.

    Jan 26, 2015

  • Early Data on Human Sequencing with Oxford Nanopore MinION

    Bio-IT World News Brief | A team based at the University of Toronto has published the first reported case of using the Oxford Nanopore MinION to sequence human DNA, in a study focused on three genes with known relevance to drug dosing.

    Jan 22, 2015