• PacBio Releases Computational Tool for Parsing Pseudogenes

    Bio-IT World | PacBio last week announced a new informatics method that genotypes gene paralogs and pseudogenes with high accuracy. The computational tool, named Paraphase, enables variant calling, copy number analysis and phasing by identifying the full gene sequence of each of the haplotypes for all genes and pseudogenes of the same gene family.

    Mar 24, 2023

  • Neighborhood Analysis Highlights Role Of Macrophages In ER+ Breast Cancers

    Bio-IT World | When it comes to breast cancer, the most commonly occurring estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) variety is a poor candidate for treatment with conventional immunotherapies designed to help the patient’s own immune system fight back. Unlike triple-negative breast cancer, ER+ tumors don’t have many infiltrating T cells so potentiating their function alone doesn’t make much of a difference.

    Mar 22, 2023

  • Japanese Medical Team Discovers Gut Microbiota to Diagnose and Treat Dementia with Lewy Bodies

    Bio-IT World | A research team from the Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan, discovered three gut bacteria types that may lead to predicting and treating dementia with Lewy bodies.

    Mar 21, 2023

  • Current Microbiome Analyses Turning Up High Number Of False-Positives

    Bio-IT World | Insufficient taxonomic information in public sequence records is a longstanding problem that was again brought to light in a recent study of simulated microbial communities. Researchers in Spain, using standard techniques to explore virtual microbiome communities, found that results obtained from DNA analyses bear little resemblance to the real-world bacterial populations being imitated and many of the detected species are not actually present.

    Mar 16, 2023

  • Marker Discovered Signaling Squamous Cell Skin Cancer About To Spread

    Bio-IT World | Researchers have found that dyskerin, a protein that provides stability to non-coding small nucleolar RNAs, signals when cutaneous squamous cell carcinomas are preparing to metastasize by migrating to the lymph nodes. Because these cancer cells temporarily stop consuming glucose and instead feed on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol molecules, the new marker may be a promising candidate for treatments involving lipid metabolism inhibitors.

    Mar 15, 2023

  • Spatial Biology Poised for Explosion by 2027

    Bio-IT World | Spatial biology is poised for an explosion in the next few years, said Colin Enderlein, a principle at DeciBio Consulting. Speaking in San Diego at the Molecular and Precision Med Tri-Con, Enderlein shared the results of DeciBio’s recent market report on the space.

    Mar 14, 2023

  • Craig Venter on Genomics’ Past and Precision Medicine’s Future

    Bio-IT World | Kevin Davies and Craig Venter sat down together to celebrate thirty years of the Molecular and Precision Med Tri-Con this week in San Diego on Monday night. Davies—the founding editor of Bio-IT World—gave a guided tour of human genomic research and sequencing since 1991 with Venter offering first person color commentary along the way.

    Mar 9, 2023

  • New Telomere Measuring Method Addressing Limitations Of Current Options

    Bio-IT World | A research collaboration led by led by Duke-NUS Medical School and National Heart Centre Singapore has set the stage for telomere measurement to one day be added to the list of clinical-grade methods for assessing biological aging. The focus is on rapid and precise measurement of individual telomeres using a technique that employs “telobaits” that latch onto the ends of telomeres in large pools of DNA fragments.

    Mar 8, 2023

  • Pharma-Diagnostics Lockstep: How Two Industries Can Work Together for Precision Medicine

    Bio-IT World | Sarah Hersey, VP of Precision Medicine at Bristol Myers Squibb, gave a balanced view of the challenges and opportunities facing precision medicine in her keynote address at the Molecular & Precision Medicine Tri-Conference in San Diego this week. After her presentation she was joined by others in the space to talk about the future for diagnostics and precision medicine.

    Mar 7, 2023

  • Therapeutic Targets For MS Found In The Gut

    Bio-IT World | Neuroscientists at the University of Virginia have succeeded in alleviating the harmful inflammation of multiple sclerosis in a mouse model of the disease by modulating the gut microbiome to disable a key immune regulator known as aryl hydrocarbon receptor.

    Mar 2, 2023

  • Forged in Steel, Exscientia Brings New Processes to Drug Development

    Bio-IT World | Andrew Hopkins, CEO and Executive Director of Exscientia, speaks with host Stan Gloss of BioTeam about Exscientia’s machine learning-based and model-driven approach to drug design, the connection between knowledge and efficiency in drug optimization projects, and its fourth platform-designed drug launch into the clinic.

    Feb 28, 2023

  • Oxford Nanopore, Tecan Launch Automated NGS Library Prep Workflow

    Bio-IT World | Oxford Nanopore Technologies and the Tecan Group announced their collaboration on an automated NGS library preparation workflow, and released a technical note outlining a proof-of-concept use case where the Oxford Nanopore’s Ligation Sequencing Kit XL V14 processing multiple DNA samples on the Tecan DreamPrep NGS achieves high yield and raw read sequencing modal accuracy of Q20 (99%) and above.

    Feb 28, 2023

  • Oxford Nanopore Extends Collaboration With UPS Healthcare, Illumina Delivers High Throughput Sequencing System to the Broad Institute, More

    Bio-IT World | Advanced machine learning provides objective tumor response assessments and unlocks novel biomarkers to predict patient outcomes; a comprehensive single-cell multi-omic solution enables the simultaneous exploration of the whole genome and whole mRNA transcriptome from the same single cell; cutting-edge generative AI models, proprietary wet-lab technologies, and a leading cancer biospecimen repository and molecular database identify new therapeutic candidates at accelerated speeds; and more.

    Feb 23, 2023

  • Gut Microbiome Implicated In Endometriosis

    Bio-IT World | The gut microbiome has for the first time been linked to a causal role in endometriosis. Up to now, efforts to investigate the contributing factors have been focused primarily on genetic changes or epigenetic disorders and yet understanding of the underlying pathology remains largely a mystery.

    Feb 22, 2023

  • Follow the Money: Waters Acquires Wyatt to Build Bioanalytical Characterization Business, NIAID Establishes Immunology Data Analysis Institute, More

    Bio-IT World | Funding for a proprietary AI-driven 3D structure engine for RNA drug discovery, unique binary assembly technology to deliver accurate, gene-length DNA in a benchtop instrument, a national institute that develops artificial intelligence systems to identify and assist young children with speech and language processing challenges, and more.

    Feb 21, 2023

  • Exploring the Changing Approach to Drug Safety

    Bio-IT World | Pharmacovigilance plays a critical role in drug safety. Pharmaceutical companies monitor newly licensed drugs, evaluate previously unreported adverse reactions, and balance drug effectiveness. We are evolving from manual pharmacovigilance to an era of precision pharmacovigilance, where a personalized approach to drug safety helps maximize the reach of new drugs and minimize adverse events.

    Feb 17, 2023

  • Natural Language Processing Designs Original Proteins From Scratch

    Bio-IT World | Using a natural language processing program developed by Salesforce Research, scientists have engineered artificial enzymes that look and fold just like natural proteins and function just as well. The artificial intelligence tool, called ProGen, allows information from the evolutionary record of multiple protein families to generate new enzymes that could prove therapeutically useful.

    Feb 16, 2023

  • New Zinc-Finger Technology Makes For Faster, Better Genetic Editing

    Bio-IT World | CRISPR-based approaches that rely on the enzyme Cas9 to cut DNA at precise locations has been the darling of genetics research over the past few years. The revolutionary gene-editing system can also produce a lot of off-target activity. And when delivered via adeno-associated virus vectors, Cas9 occupies so much space that little room is left for any other therapeutic cargo that might be needed.

    Feb 14, 2023

  • Bioassays Have An Integration Problem: Collaboration Will Be Key To Making Them FAIR

    Bio-IT World | Whilst life science companies have come to recognize data as their greatest asset, it is also their greatest challenge. Much of data is siloed in different formats and locations, making it difficult to discover, query, and share—rendering data essentially unusable. FAIR data must be rolled out across the entire industry if companies want to accelerate R&D and enable scientific queries to be answered more rapidly.

    Feb 10, 2023

  • Biomedical Research Experts Reach Consensus on Open Science Practices to Monitor Institutions Worldwide

    Bio-IT World | A group of 80 research stakeholders convened to determine the best biomedical open science practices and create a fully automated dashboard to monitor their implementation. The team’s efforts will be used to improve research quality and foster innovation in the biomedical space.

    Feb 9, 2023