• July News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product releases from around the industry, including new research initiatives in autism, lung cancer, malaria, and Phelan-McDermid Syndrome, and a new device for isolating circulating tumor cells.

    Jul 31, 2014

  • Pad Pipetter Eases Tedious Lab Work

    Bio-IT World News Brief | The Yaniv Erlich lab at MIT's Whitehead Institute, famous for its pioneering work in "genome hacking," has released an app to help lab technicians with complex pipetting procedures.

    Jul 30, 2014

  • Cambridge-Based Emulate Plans to Jumpstart Organ-on-a-Chip Market

    Bio-IT World | Emulate is not the first company to test the drug industry’s readiness for organs-on-chips, but after five years incubating at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, it’s entering the field with big industry partners, a plug-and-play product suite, and a toehold at the FDA.

    Jul 30, 2014

  • 23andMe Gets $1.4m from NIH, Publishes Parkinson's Research

    Bio-IT World | 23andMe announced this morning a two-year grant of almost $1.4 million from the National Institutes of Health to expand development of the company’s database and research engine, and its participation in a large-scale GWAS study of Parkinson's disease.

    Jul 29, 2014

  • Cloud Weakness Exploited to Launch DDoS Attacks

    Computerworld | Attackers can target Amazon EC2 instances by exploiting a vulnerability in distributed search engine software, Computerworld is reporting. Researchers have found new variants of a Trojan program for Linux that launches denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks running on EC2 instances.

    Jul 28, 2014

  • Testing an Accelerated Path for Biosimilars

    Bio-IT World News Brief | For the first time, the FDA has accepted an application for a generic version of a biologic drug under the new regulatory pathway established by the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2010.

    Jul 28, 2014

  • Cypher Genomics Signs Deal with Illumina, Expands Executive Team

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Cypher Genomics yesterday announced a sales deal with Illumina and added a host of new players to executive board positions.

    Jul 25, 2014

  • With $650 Million Gift, Psychiatric Disorders Once Again in Limelight at the Broad

    Bio-IT World | Ted Stanley, the philanthropist whose 2007 gift of $100 million formed the basis of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, has pledged an additional $650 million to the center.

    Jul 23, 2014

  • Roche Planning to Stay Out of Acquisitions

    Reuters | Roche is staying out of the pharma merger and acquisition fray, the CEO said. "We're sticking to our previous strategy... [of] small acquisitions and partnerships."

    Jul 21, 2014

  • Berry Genomics, Illumina Seek Chinese Regulatory Approval for NIPT

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Berry Genomics has chosen Illumina next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology as the platform on which Berry hopes to secure Chinese Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) regulatory approval for clinical applications. The combined "system" is in late stage CFDA testing, the Chinese company says.

    Jul 21, 2014

  • Universal Language: The Pistoia Alliance Takes on Indescribable Biology

    Bio-IT World | The Pistoia Alliance received a Best Practices Award at this year's Bio-IT World Conference & Expo for its work on HELM, a project that establishes a standard notation for complex macromolecules that are too large to sketch out atomically, but too heterogeneous to express as chains of RNA or amino acids. The project will aid interoperability across the industry, as pharma companies increasingly rely on strange, hybrid biochemistry in creating new therapeutics.

    Jul 18, 2014

  • Could CRISPR Transform Wild Ecosystems?

    Bio-IT World | In a paper published yesterday in the open access journal eLife, George Church and colleagues discuss the potential for "gene drives" that alter the genomes of whole wild populations using CRISPR gene editing technology, and weigh the risks and public interests surrounding such initiatives.

    Jul 18, 2014

  • Illumina Acquires Regulatory Strategy Consulting Firm

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Illumina today announced its acquisition of Myraqa, a consulting firm specializing in the regulatory strategy surrounding in vitro diagnostics, particularly companion diagnostics.

    Jul 16, 2014

  • Novartis Signs On to License Google's Glucose-Monitoring Contact Lenses

    New York Times | Google and Novartis have announced a partnership for Novartis to license Google's smart contact lens that could measure a wearer's blood sugar levels.

    Jul 16, 2014

  • IBM Gains Ground with SoftLayer Cloud

    Computerworld | IBM is gaining cloud ground with its SoftLayer product, Big Blue says, reporting 6,000 new customers in the last year and $1.2 billion invested in data centers.

    Jul 15, 2014

  • Transcriptic Launches Molecular, Cell Biology On-Demand Lab

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Transcriptic today launched the Transcriptic Platform, their own cloud-based programmable system for defining and executing experimental protocols. The company says the platform can create a 10-fold productivity advantage for researchers working on molecular and cell biology.

    Jul 15, 2014

  • BGI Scientists Expand Reference Genes for Human Microbiome

    Bio-IT World | The Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), China's gene sequencing powerhouse, has released a set of reference genes for the human gut microbiome, in a catalogue that is substantially larger and covers a greater diversity of human populations than any previous resources.

    Jul 14, 2014

  • Illumina Chosen as Service Provider for Genomics England Project

    Technology Review | Illumina has been chosen as the "preferred partner" for the UK's 100,000 genomes project. Genomics England chose Illumina to do the sequencing, and said that fewer than five other companies bid for the job.

    Jul 13, 2014

  • Peer Inside the American Gut

    Bio-IT World News Brief | This Wednesday, American Gut, the crowdsourced project that has now sequenced gut microbiota samples from over 3,000 volunteers, released both a round of results and its own analytical pipeline.

    Jul 11, 2014

  • Human Brain Project Responds to Complaints

    Bio-IT World | Today, the leadership of the Human Brain Project circulated a document responding to this Monday's open letter to the European Commission, in which neuroscientists aired concerns about the aims and decision-making processes behind the HBP.

    Jul 10, 2014