• Copy Number Variants in Neurological Disease

    Pacific Standard | More reliable methods for detecting large copy number variants across the whole genome are helping to reveal the importance of these mutations in explaining neurological disorders.

    Oct 10, 2014

  • Roche Purchases AbVitro's DNA Enrichment Technology for Clinical Samples

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Roche, which has been retooling its next generation sequencing strategy since beginning the closure of 454 Life Sciences last October, has acquired a new sample preparation technology for an NGS pipeline.

    Oct 10, 2014

  • Illumina Opens BaseSpace to Proteomics Data

    Bio-IT World | The OneOmics Project, a partnership between Illumina and mass spectrometry provider AB SCIEX, has produced a network of apps in the BaseSpace cloud informatics environment to store and analyze mass spec and proteomics data, the first multi-omics functions in Illumina's flagship analytics project.

    Oct 8, 2014

  • BRCA2 Protein Structure Described

    Imperial College London News | The BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are well known for mutations that raise the risk of developing breast cancer, but their structure, and the mechanisms by which healthy copies of these proteins repair broken DNA strands, have been little understood.

    Oct 7, 2014

  • Nobel Prize Awarded for Decoding Geometrical Pattern of Brain's Spatial Awareness

    Nature News | Norwegian neuroscientists May-Britt and Edvard Moser today received the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with former supervisor John O'Keefe, for their discovery of "grid cells" in the brain's entorhinal cortex.

    Oct 6, 2014

  • FDA Issues Draft Guidance on Laboratory Developed Tests

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Today, the FDA officially issued a pair of draft guidance documents outlining its regulatory plans for laboratory developed tests.

    Oct 3, 2014

  • September News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product releases from around the industry, including early-stage pharma startups supported by GSK and Avalon Ventures, and the Eaglecore cloud knowledge management platform.

    Oct 2, 2014

  • TranSMART Platform Powers International Asthma Research Initiative

    Bio-IT World | The U-BIOPRED Consortium, an international project searching for novel biomarkers to better define severe asthma cases, received a Bio-IT World Best Practices Award this spring for its far-reaching implementation of the tranSMART knowledge management platform.

    Oct 1, 2014

  • First NIH Grant Awards in BRAIN Initiative

    Bio-IT World News Brief | This morning, the NIH announced the recipients of its first round of grants tied to the nationwide BRAIN Initiative, totaling $46 million in funding for research meant to develop an integrated understanding of human brain function.

    Sep 30, 2014

  • New, Larger Facility for Transcriptic Robotics Lab

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Transcriptic, the programmable lab-for-hire, has moved to a new, 10,000-square foot location as it adds more instruments and "work cells" where experiments are conducted.

    Sep 29, 2014

  • CRISPR Knockin Mice Enable Rapid Gene Editing

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have created a line of mice whose cells naturally express the Cas9 protein used in CRISPR gene editing, which can be used for virtually any gene knockdown experiment.

    Sep 26, 2014

  • GeneHub Pulls Its Kickstarter Project to Sequence Whole Genomes for the Masses

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Just two days after launching a Kickstarter campaign to start the world's first brokerage service for personal whole genome sequencing, GeneHub has pulled the plug.

    Sep 25, 2014

  • Illumina at EmTech

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Francis de Souza, president of gene sequencing company Illumina, spoke at the EmTech conference in Cambridge this week about his company's pivot to clinical use, and a growing market for whole genome sequencing that he says will produce 228,000 whole human genomes in 2014 alone.

    Sep 25, 2014

  • GeneHub Wants to Sell Whole Genomes Direct to Consumer

    Bio-IT World News Brief | San Francisco-based GeneHub has plans to become the first company selling whole genome sequences to all comers, and launched a Kickstarter campaign this week to raise the funds it needs to get started.

    Sep 24, 2014

  • Big Changes for Molecular Diagnostics as FDA Moves on Lab Developed Tests

    Clinical Informatics News | As the FDA extends its oversight to tests designed and performed in a single laboratory, diagnostic companies are celebrating a more even playing field. But hospital and academic labs worry that the high price tag of FDA review will stifle their in-house tests without protecting patients.

    Sep 23, 2014

  • 15 Biotechs to Watch

    Fierce Biotech | Fierce Biotech has unveiled its hotly-anticipated Fierce 15, an annual list of biotech companies showing special promise in delivering transformative new therapies.

    Sep 22, 2014

  • The Immunotherapy Challenge: Moving from Preclinical Research to Clinical Practice

    Bio-IT World | Contributed Commentary | As personalized medicine opens up new possibilities in cancer immunotherapy, quantified image analysis is a promising route to discovering biomarkers that can meaningfully stratify patients for treatment.

    Sep 18, 2014

  • The Latest Scoop on the MinION Portable Sequencer

    MIT Technology Review | Oxford Nanopore, and the early access users of its MinION nanopore sequencer, share details about the device's accuracy, read length, applications, and a forthcoming high throughput instrument.

    Sep 17, 2014

  • gCell Gives Genentech Corporate Memory of Cell Line Experiments

    Bio-IT World | Genentech combed through its trove of thousands of cell lines to create a definitive phenotypic and genetic profile of each, making it possible to trace back preclinical experiments and share results company-wide. The project won the company its second straight Bio-IT World Best Practices Award for finding new efficiencies in its preclinical pipeline.

    Sep 15, 2014

  • The Microbiome as a Source of Antibiotics

    Nature News | While the human microbiome has been mined as a source of novel therapies for years — through probiotics or fecal transplantation — a team at UC San Francisco is now exploring whether more traditional drugs could be found in the arsenals of our commensal bacteria.

    Sep 12, 2014