• Human Brain Project Faces Growing Skepticism from Neuroscientists

    Bio-IT World | This morning, the European Commission received an open letter signed by 154 European neuroscientists, expressing concern over the direction of the Human Brain Project that was launched last year.

    Jul 7, 2014

  • China FDA Approves Two Chinese Sequencers, NIPT Kit

    South China Morning Post | The China Food & Drug Administration approved two sequencers from BGI--the BGISEQ-1000 and BGISEQ-100--and a diagnostic kit for prenatal testing of "high risk" pregnancies.

    Jul 3, 2014

  • Maximizing Success from Vendor Consolidation

    Bio-IT World | Guest Commentary | The global pharmaceutical industry faces challenges that require it to look beyond the status quo and develop a fresh transformative vision for the future. Many pharmas are now looking to consolidate vendors as they embark on restructuring and cost reduction efforts.

    Jul 3, 2014

  • NIH Funds Six Centers in Undiagnosed Diseases Network

    NBC News | Yesterday the National Institutes of Health launched the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, a four-year, $43 million program focused on the rarest of diseases, many afflicting fewer than 50 people worldwide.

    Jul 3, 2014

  • Big BRAIN: Finding Connections in the Literature Flood with Euretos BRAIN

    Bio-IT World | Euretos is certainly not the first company to recognize the problems researchers have processing and keeping up to date with the latest research. While there’s ever more data pouring from researchers’ lab instruments, there’s also an ongoing flow to manage from journals and other publications. Euretos has launched a cloud platform called BRAIN: the Bio Relations and Intelligence Network, that allows researchers to mine and connect data from public and private published sources in new ways.

    Jul 1, 2014

  • Robots for Hire: Emerald Launches Robotic Laboratories for Life Sciences

    Bio-IT World | Outsourcing options in biotech have been growing. CROs and other labs offer a wide range of services. But what if you aren’t interested in a partner as much as simply automated experiments? Don’t outsource experiments to another lab; let the robots do them!

    Jul 1, 2014

  • FDA Loves Genetic Tests, If Accurate

    Bio-IT World Brief | In a comment on FDA's blog on Thursday, Jeffrey Shuren, Director of FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, again restated the Agency's concern with 23andMe's direct-to-consumers genomic tests. The issue, 
    "at the heart of our five-year effort to work with the firm 23andMe," he says, is accuracy.

    Jun 30, 2014

  • The Hunt for a New Human Reference Genome

    Bio-IT World | The human reference genome has served geneticists well since the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. But with new sequencing technologies and a unique cell line, a team attached to the Genome Reference Consortium is tinkering with a new "platinum genome" based on a single haploid sample, a reference that could better represent structural variants and the range of human haplotypes.

    Jun 30, 2014

  • Illumina Releases Long-Read Apps and Library Prep Kits

    Bio-IT World | Illumina is looking to expand its footprint in long-read sequencing applications, with big announcements this week about its TruSeq synthetic long-read technology.

    Jun 27, 2014

  • The UberCloud Experiment - Exploring Life Sciences in the Cloud

    Bio-IT World Guest Commentary | Cost savings, shorter time to market, better quality, less product failures: the benefits that engineers and scientists can expect from using technical computing in their research, design, and development processes can be huge. The UberCloud Experiment provides a platform for scientists and engineers to explore, learn and understand the end-to-end process of accessing and using Cloud resources, to identify concerns and resolve roadblocks.

    Jun 25, 2014

  • Sequencing the Strange Communities: Taking on Metagenomics

    Bio-IT World | In another look at the Hi-C process for sorting out disparate bits of DNA, Jonathan Eisen’s lab at UC Davis tweaks the Markov Cluster Algorithm to take on metagenomics. The results need further attention, but could be extremely useful for joining plasmids and chromosomes from the same species.

    Jun 24, 2014

  • Australian Research Institute IDs Novel Syndrome Variants with NextCODE Tools

    Bio-IT World News Brief | The ANZAC Research Institute in Sydney, Australia, has used NextCODE Health's Clinical Sequence Analyzer and Sequence Miner tools to ID novel sequence variants behind X-linked Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome (CMTX).

    Jun 23, 2014

  • 23andMe Seeks FDA Approval for Health Report on Single Condition

    Bio-IT World | Today, 23andMe's new chief legal and regulatory officer, Kathy Hibbs, announced that the company has submitted a 510(k) to the FDA, seeking approval to tell customers whether they carry mutations for the rare disease Bloom syndrome. The move signals a cooperative, incremental approach to restoring the 23andMe health reports that the FDA shut down last November.

    Jun 20, 2014

  • PacBio Users Share New Tools and Applications at Meeting in Baltimore

    Bio-IT World | At the annual Pacific Biosciences user group meeting in Baltimore, geneticists and bioinformaticians gathered this week to discuss how long-read sequencing is opening up previously intractable problems. Rapid de novo assembly of whole genomes was a major topic of conversation, while users unveiled new computational tools that greatly speed up long-read assemblies, and PacBio announced plans for updated chemistry and high-throughput HLA typing.

    Jun 19, 2014

  • HudsonAlpha and University of Alabama Birmingham Launch Center for Genomic Medicine

    Alabama.com | The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine are expanding and formalizing their relationship as the UAB-HudsonAlpha Center for Genomic Medicine

    Jun 18, 2014

  • Scripps, USC Considering Joining Efforts

    San Diego Union-Tribune | The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and the University of Southern California are reportedly considering a merger or acquisition, under which Scripps would be acquired by USC.

    Jun 17, 2014

  • Myriad Challenges Pathway Genomics' BRCATrue Test

    Bio-IT World Brief | Ten days after Pathway Genomics announced its new BRCATrue test and its plan to donate $10 million worth of tests in its one for one program, Myriad Genetics filed a patent infringement suit against the company. While calling the suit "unwarranted", Jim Plante, Pathway Genomics' founder and CEO, also acknowledged that the lawsuit was "not unexpected."

    Jun 16, 2014

  • The Coming Wave of Generic Biologics

    Forbes | Matthew Herper examines the market for generic biotech therapies, which have sometimes been seen as more resistant to generic competition than chemically manufactured drugs.

    Jun 13, 2014

  • May-June News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | News and product releases from around the industry, including Myriad Genetics donating cancer variants to PROMPT study, and the launch of MolecularHealth's cancer genotyping service.

    Jun 13, 2014

  • Moderna Remaking Itself as mRNA Startup Incubator

    Xconomy | With over $400 million on hand, Cambridge-based Moderna Therapeutics is revisiting its role in bringing mRNA-based therapies to market.

    Jun 12, 2014