• 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

  • Aspera's Michelle Munson Joins GenoSpace Board

    Bio-IT World News Brief | GenoSpace announced this morning that Michelle Munson, CEO of Aspera, an IBM Company, has joined its board as an independent director.

    Jan 22, 2015

  • Next Generation Solution for Forensic DNA Testing

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Illumina today released its MiSeq FGx instrument, a version of the company's MiSeq next generation sequencer modified for forensic DNA testing, as well as ForenSeq chemistry and software kits.

    Jan 21, 2015

  • President Obama Heralds New Precision Medicine Initiative in State of the Union

    Bio-IT World | Commentators from around the science and healthcare world react to President Obama's announcement, in last night's State of the Union address, that his new budget will propose a Precision Medicine Initiative to support research into individualized therapies based on patients' unique genetic and molecular profiles.

    Jan 21, 2015

  • SV Bio Relaunched as Lifecode, Maker of LDTs

    Bio-IT World | SV Bio today announced a new name, a new focus, and a new product: a next generation sequencing (NGS)-based oncology assay, the Pan Cancer Somatic Panel (PCSP).

    Jan 20, 2015

  • Biotech Boom or Biotech Bubble?

    New York Times | "I have my seatbelt and crash helmet on," a biotech CEO tells The New York Times in an investigation of soaring biotechnology stocks and drug approvals in the wake of last week's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

    Jan 20, 2015

  • LifeMap Releases NGS Phenotyper

    Bio-IT World Product Brief | LifeMap Sciences has released VarElect, an application that David Warshawsky, CEO of the company, calls a next-generation sequencing phenotyper. The tool leverages LifeMap’s integrated biomedical knowledgebase and discovery platform for biomedical research, which includes GeneCards human gene database; MalaCards human disease database; and LifeMap Discovery, the database of embryonic development, stem cell research, and regenerative medicine.

    Jan 20, 2015

  • Atul Butte Moves to UCSF to Head Computational Health Sciences Institute

    Bio-IT World | UC San Francisco announced this morning that it has recruited Atul Butte to lead the new Institute for Computational Health Sciences, an Institute the University says will serve at the cornerstone of its efforts to harness the power of big data for precision medicine. He's also been named executive director of clinical informatics for UC Health Sciences and Services.

    Jan 15, 2015

  • Genome wiz Venter partners with Roche in DNA sequencing deal

    Reuters | Genome pioneer J. Craig Venter has signed a multi-year deal to sequence and analyze tens of thousands of genomes for Roche's Genentech unit in a deal aimed at identifying new drug targets.

    Jan 15, 2015

  • Whistleblower Lawsuit Calls Billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiongs Healthcare Startup Fraudulent And Dangerous

    Forbes | On the television newsmagazine "60 Minutes" and in a cover story for Forbes, Patrick Soon-Shiong, the world's richest doctor, has promised that his new company, NantHealth, can dramatically improve care for cancer patients everywhere. "I'm incredibly encouraged to say that we are on the path," Soon-Shiong told 60 Minutes' Sanjay Gupta. [...]

    Jan 15, 2015

  • 10X Genomics Announces a High-Throughput Platform for Synthetic Long Reads

    Bio-IT World | 10X Genomics made its public debut this week at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, touting a platform that will complement Illumina's next-gen sequencers with a massively multiplexed system for reconstructing long-range genomic information.

    Jan 14, 2015

  • A New Dawn For Biotech

    Forbes | This week, much of the biotech investing world is in San Francisco for the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Old timers like me -- I've attended nearly every year since 1998 -- remember the infinitely more manageable Hambrecht & Quist conference, still quaintly known as H&Q.

    Jan 14, 2015

  • Merck Makes Investment in Moderna

    Forbes | Moderna Therapeutics has snagged another $100m of financing, this time from Merck. A $50m cash up front payment for messenger RNA technology along with a $50m equity payment is a strong vote of confidence from the pharma in mRNA's future.

    Jan 14, 2015

  • A Restless Illumina on Display in CEO's J.P. Morgan Address

    Bio-IT World | In his address at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Illumina CEO Jay Flatley announced new high-throughput instruments, a refined regulatory strategy centered on the NextSeq mid-range sequencer, and progress in oncology and prenatal testing, as his company pivots to a more hands-on approach to clinical genomics.

    Jan 13, 2015

  • GENALICE, Knome Announce Partnership

    Bio-IT World News Brief | GENALICE and Knome today announced a strategic partnership to offer their products together as a turn-key solution for those using next-generation sequencing (NGS) data to interpret patients’ genomes.

    Jan 12, 2015

  • Foundation Medicine Majority Stake Acquired by Roche for $1.03b

    Bio-IT World | Roche announced this morning that it has acquired a majority stake in Foundation Medicine. Roche will tender approximately $780m for 56.3% of the company.

    Jan 12, 2015

  • Biotechs may face a slowdown

    BostonGlobe.com | These are boom times in biotechnology. Forty-one new drugs were approved for US sale in 2014, the highest tally in 18 years. A record 63 biotech startups went public, breaking the 1999 record of 52 initial public offerings. And the value of biopharma merger deals nearly tripled to $223 billion from a year earlier.

    Jan 12, 2015