• Genome Analysis in the Cloud and for the Masses

    Bio-IT World | 2014 Best Practices Winner | When the Human Genome Sequence Center (HGSC) at Baylor College of Medicine took on the sequencing and analysis of genomic data from 14,000 individuals, they knew they had a problem of scale. The solution for getting the data analyzed and out to 300 collaborators worldwide won the team and their partners at DNAnexus a 2014 Bio-IT World Best Practices Award for IT Infrastructure and High Performance Computing.

    May 30, 2014

  • China Introduces Its Own Sequencer

    ChemistryWorld | The Beijing Institute of Genomics (BIG, not to be confused with BGI) and a Chinese partner company have launched a sequencing machine capable of longer read lengths than Illumina, 1/3 cheaper to manufacture, and 1/5 cheaper to operate.

    May 29, 2014

  • NextGxDx Doubles Office Space, Grows Genetic Testing Business

    Nashville Business Journal | NextGxDx is doubling its office space, after raising $2.9 million earlier this year. The Nashville, Tenn.-based company intends to serve as a one-stop-shop for doctors and hospitals to order genetic tests for their patients.

    May 29, 2014

  • Twist Bioscience Takes in Funding Round for DNA Synthesizer

    Xconomy | Twist Bioscience yesterday announced a $26 million Series B funding round, as well as a $5 million DARPA contract, to continue development of a high-throughput DNA synthesis device.

    May 28, 2014

  • Quantapore Receives $35m Investment Toward New Sequencer

    San Francisco Business Times | An ex-Ion Torrent scientist has a $35 million investment to prove his new sequencer is faster and cheaper than anything else.

    May 22, 2014

  • Advances in Genetic Engineering at the 2014 American Society for Microbiology Meeting

    Bio-IT World | Presenters at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology showed off new applications for the CRISPR system of gene editing, and projects that have re-coded bacterial genomes on a massive scale.

    May 22, 2014

  • GenePeeks Launches Sperm Donor Matching Service

    Bio-IT World News Brief | GenePeeks has opened its in silico nursery, formally launching the Matchright screening service for families who are planning to use a sperm donor to conceive.

    May 22, 2014

  • N-of-One Signs Agreement with Mayo Clinic

    Bio-IT World News Brief | Mayo Clinic and N-of-One, have signed an agreement under which N-of-One will provide Mayo Clinic with clinical interpretation information to aid in highly complex molecular diagnostics.

    May 21, 2014

  • QIAGEN Adds HGMD and Other BIOBASE Offerings, Plans Ingenuity Clinical

    Bio-IT World News Brief | QIAGEN is adding content from BIOBASE including HGMD, the human gene mutation database, to its bioinformatics offerings. HGMD and other BIOBASE solutions will provide the foundation for Ingenuity Clinical, QIAGEN's forthcoming clinical NGS decision-support solution.

    May 21, 2014

  • A European Look at the Changing Landscape of Prenatal Testing

    Bio-IT World | At the Prenatal Molecular Diagnostics Europe conference last week in Lisbon conversations ranged from the current landscape in prenatal diagnostics to the future vision of the technology and the regulatory environment that will enable it.

    May 21, 2014

  • At AstraZeneca, Occasion for Introspection

    Bio-IT World | On Friday, a frank assessment of AstraZeneca's R&D practices appeared in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, just as Pfizer's repeated takeover bids have increased scrutiny of AstraZeneca's drug development pipeline.

    May 19, 2014

  • LifeMap Solutions Joins New Wave of Genetic Health Companies

    Bio-IT World | With a close partnership with Eric Schadt’s Icahn Institute for Genomics at Mt. Sinai, LifeMap Solutions is an intriguing – though closely-guarded – entrant into the renewed rush to provide genetic health information to patients.

    May 19, 2014

  • Illumina CTO Joins Board of BaseHealth

    Bio-IT World News Brief | BaseHealth, whose platform Genophen uses patients' unique genetic and clinical profiles to assess their personal health risks, today announced a tightening of its relationship with Illumina.

    May 15, 2014

  • Broad and Novartis Keep Up with Big Data

    Bio-IT World | At this April's Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, representatives from the Broad Institute and Novartis presented new tools for bioassays and drug development.

    May 15, 2014

  • NIH Addresses Gender Bias in Preclinical Studies

    Nature | The NIH yesterday announced new policies to correct a tendency to study male cells and animals in preclinical research, including a requirement that applicants for NIH grants disclose the balance of male and female models used in their studies.

    May 15, 2014

  • Ayasdi Seeks Out the Underlying Shapes of Big Data

    Bio-IT World | Ayasdi, an informatics company whose topological analysis platform searches for unpredictable patterns in large datasets, is expanding its footprint in the life sciences with new products and partnerships.

    May 14, 2014

  • Expiration of NIH Program Leads to Broad Institute Layoffs

    Boston Globe | The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has announced layoffs of 27 employees involved in contract work for the NIH-funded Molecular Library Probe Center Network.

    May 13, 2014

  • Helen Berman Honored with Benjamin Franklin Award

    Bio-IT World | Helen Berman, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at the Center for Integrative Proteomics Research at Rutgers University, was honored with the Benjamin Franklin Award at the 2014 Bio-IT World Conference & Expo for her work building the Protein Data Bank.

    May 12, 2014

  • Pfizer Pressing Charm Offensive Over Potential AstraZeneca Buy

    Bio-IT World News Brief | After weeks of rejected offers to acquire AstraZeneca, and public skepticism over the outcome of such a deal, Pfizer this morning released a series of videos promoting the potential merger as a boon to science.

    May 12, 2014

  • IBM Launches Elastic Storage

    Computerworld | Today, IBM released a commercial version of the "Elastic Storage" memory architecture it has used internally for its Watson supercomputing program.

    May 12, 2014