• Promising Gene Therapy Company Spark Therapeutics to Go Public

    FierceBiotech | Spark Therapeutics, a company with a strong Phase III drug candidate bidding to be the first gene therapy approved for use in the U.S., has filed for an IPO, planning to sell $86 million in public shares.

    Jan 5, 2015

  • With FDA Recommendation, Novartis Heads for First Approval of a Biosimilar

    Reuters | In advance of a final decision to be handed down January 7, the FDA today revealed that staff reviewers have recommended approval of a biologic made by Novartis that imitates Amgen's off-patent Neupogen.

    Jan 5, 2015

  • Quanterix Aims for Early Clinical Adoption with High-Throughput Protein Assays

    Bio-IT World | Looking to open its highly sensitive Simoa instruments to new customers, Quanterix is opening an accelerator in its Massachusetts lab, where users can test out homebrewed assays in search of new biomarker tests that detect proteins at extremely low concentrations.

    Jan 2, 2015

  • Banner Year for New Drug Approvals

    Reuters | 2014 was a banner year for drug approvals, Reuters reports. 41 novel medications were approved, the most since the all-time high of 53 approvals in 1996.

    Jan 2, 2015

  • High-Performance Computing Can Accelerate Life Sciences Discoveries

    Bio-IT World | Inside the Box | As petascale supercomputing systems grow more accessible, there is now an opportunity for life sciences researchers to run computations on genomic or molecular data that would be impossible with desktops or small clusters — but only if they are willing to adapt their informatics tools to new computing architectures.

    Dec 31, 2014

  • November and December News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product releases from around the industry, including a study of attitudes toward newborn genomic testing, and Definiens' latest tissue quantification software.

    Dec 30, 2014

  • Retraction Watch's Top Retractions of 2014

    The Scientist | Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, the founders of the Retraction Watch blog, offer their annual list of the year's most prominent, spectacular, or telling retractions in the scientific literature.

    Dec 29, 2014

  • Reindeer and 23andMe

    More Intelligent Life | One woman's search for family history led her to 23andMe first, and the reindeer next.

    Dec 24, 2014

  • Nanopore Sequencing Is Here to Stay

    Bio-IT World | Oxford Nanopore has created the world's first functional nanopore sequencer, the pocketsize MinION. As early access users start to share their experiences with the instrument, a picture is emerging of a world where DNA data could be gathered anywhere, anytime — and by almost anyone.

    Dec 22, 2014

  • The Best and Worst in a Tumultuous Year for Science

    WIRED | It's been a roller-coaster year for science. It started with what looked like a remarkable breakthrough in stem cell science, which was soon followed by a stunning announcement by cosmologists: the first detection of gravitational waves, direct evidence for a popular theory of how the universe began. But as the year draws to a close, the first of these discoveries has been thoroughly discredited, and the second appears to be on the ropes.

    Dec 22, 2014

  • Roche Acquires Bina Technologies’ Powerful Genome Analysis Platform

    Bio-IT World | Bina Technologies announced this morning that it has been acquired by Roche. Financial details were not disclosed. The Roche acquisition is, “the best outcome that could have happened for our company,” co-founder and CEO Narges Bani Asadi told Bio-IT World today.

    Dec 19, 2014

  • Function Follows Form: A New Look at Genome Folding

    Bio-IT World | Fitting a two-meter strand of DNA into a nucleus a few microns long is no simple thing. The genome isn’t wadded up and stuffed into every cell in the body, it’s folded meticulously. A five-year effort to look at the genome inside cells suggests that these folds may play crucial roles in function.

    Dec 19, 2014

  • Genome Sequencing Exploring the Diagnostic Promise

    NIH Director's Blog | At the time that we completed a draft of the 3 billion letters of the human genome about a decade ago, it would have cost about $100 million to sequence a second human genome. Today, thanks to advances in DNA sequencing technology, it will soon be possible to sequence your genome or mine for  $1,000…

    Dec 19, 2014

  • Version 13 of the Human Protein Atlas, Clickable, Downloadable, and Nearly Complete, is Now Online

    Bio-IT World | A new version of a research tool described as the world’s first spatial index to the human proteome is expected to change the nature of drug development, and is already the source of some two external peer-reviewed research papers on average every day, said Professor Mathias Uhlén, at a press conference on Nov. 6 announcing the release of version 13 of the Atlas.

    Dec 18, 2014

  • Global Alliance Plans Internet for Genomes

    MIT Technology Review | Scientists are starting to open their DNA databases online, creating a network that could pave the way for gene analysis at a new scale.

    Dec 18, 2014

  • Big Pharma Moves to Boston

    Boston Globe | Big pharma is expanding its reach in the Boston area, picking up small to mid-sized biotechs for billions of dollars. Last week Merck announced plans to buy Cubist Pharmaceuticals for $9.5 billion.

    Dec 17, 2014

  • 14M Genomics Spins out of Sanger

    Business Weekly | A new genomics powerhouse, 14M Genomics, spun out of the world famous Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, has been launched in the Cambridge UK technology cluster with a £12.5 million financing.

    Dec 17, 2014

  • Quanterix Offers Lab Access to Simoa Protein Analyzer

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Quanterix today announced the opening of a Simoa Accelerator in Lexington, Mass., where scientists and can rent access to the company's high-throughput Simoa instruments for protein analysis.

    Dec 16, 2014

  • Retraction Watch to Build Comprehensive Database of Retractions

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Retraction Watch, a popular blog founded in 2010 to investigate retractions in the scientific literature, has received a two-year grant from the MacArthur Foundation to compile a database of all retractions, corrections, and expressions of concern in every field of science.

    Dec 15, 2014

  • Agenda: Informatics Channel at MMTC

    Bio-IT World | The Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference in San Francisco has a rich agenda with four content channels in addition to short courses and symposia. This year we are particularly interested in the Informatics Channel. Here’s the working draft of our agenda.

    Dec 12, 2014