• Batten Disease Finding Ends a Diagnostic Odyssey for California Family

    Bio-IT World EXCLUSIVE | Three years after Jacob Allingham first began experiencing seizures that worsened into a bewildering and quickly progressing combination of symptoms, the exhausting (and exorbitant) diagnostic odyssey for Jacob and his similarly affected younger brother Dylan has come to an end.

    Jan 24, 2013

  • Salk Institute Gets $42 Million for Genomics Center

    UT San Diego | The Salk Institute in La Jolla has received $42 million gift from the New York-based Helmsley Charitable Trust that will be used to explore the genomics behind cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

    Jan 23, 2013

  • David Cox, Genomics Leader, Dies

    Bio-IT World | David Cox, a geneticist and senior vice president at Pfizer, died yesterday. Cox was involved in early efforts to sequence the human genome, served as the chief scientific officer for Perlegen, and led Pfizer's genetics research efforts in the Rinat office.

    Jan 23, 2013

  • New HIPAA Rules Increase IT Responsibility

    eWeek | A new HIPAA update will make IT companies more liable for data breaches. Business associates—which includes  software developers and data backup services—now must meet the privacy and security rules of HIPAA just like doctors, hospitals and health insurance providers.

    Jan 22, 2013

  • Picking the Right NGS Supplier

    Opiniomics Blog | All NGS suppliers are not created equal says Mick Watson, manager of a genomics facility at the University of Edinburgh, in a blog post. Data quality can vary dramatically between instruments, teams, and offerings; Watson breaks down what to look for to make sure you're getting the best work for your money.

    Jan 21, 2013

  • New Company Offers Genetic Panel for Parents

    San Francisco Business Journal | Randy Scott's company InVitae is beta testing a panel of genetic conditons--150 now, up to 500 by the end of the year--that parents could use to know what diseases their children may be exposed to.

    Jan 21, 2013

  • Moleculo Man: Mickey Kertesz on Illumina’s Sub-Assembly Acquisition

    Bio-IT World | You could have gotten pretty long odds on a major genomics company snapping up a stealth start-up less than one year old, named after a Saturday Night Live character and without a scientific publication to its name. But last month, Moleculo co-founders Mickey Kertesz and Dmitry Pushkarev sold their San Francisco start-up to Illumina. The prize was a proprietary technology—part wet-lab, part computation—for greatly increasing the assembled virtual read-length of short-read next-gen sequencing data, addressing a short-coming in Illumina’s second-generation HiSeq and MiSeq instruments.

    Jan 18, 2013

  • Jackson Lab Breaks Ground on Genomic Medicine Center

    UConn Today | The Jackson Lab has broken ground on its new Connecticut buildings--The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine. The new center will support research collaborations aiming to uncover genomic causes of human diseases and shape new approaches in personalized medicine to prevent, detect, and treat them. 

    Jan 18, 2013

  • New Data Analysis Company Takes on Shape of Data

    New York Times | Ayasdi, a new data analysis start-up based in Palo Alto, is based on a new fundamental technique of mathmatics analysis. The technique analyzes the shape of complex data.

    Jan 18, 2013

  • DNA Reveals Identities, Families

    New York Times | With nothing more than the publically-posted DNA sequences and Google, researchers have identified not only the individuals who donated their genetic materials, but whole families. 

    Jan 17, 2013

  • Brenner on Janelia Farm

    HHMI Bulletin | Sydney Brenner spends part of his time at Janelia Farm as a senior reserach fellow. He talks with the HHMI Bulletin about what is working at Janelia Farm and what challenges the labs face.

    Jan 17, 2013

  • AstraZeneca Establishes First Russian Biobank.

    Bio-IT World | AstraZeneca is expanding its biotechnology operations in Russia, through the establishment of the country’s first biobank and a clinical research center in St. Petersburg. 

    Jan 16, 2013

  • Big Pharma Rumor Mill

    In the Pipeline | It seems to be a season of shake ups in Big Pharma, and Derek Lowe is trading theories. Right now, the predominant ones include changes at Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

    Jan 16, 2013

  • SV Bio Launches In Silico Genome Diagnostics Service

    Bio-IT World | Today's launch of Silicon Valley Biosystems (SV Bio), an in silico diagnostics company established by Navigenics co-founder Dietrich Stephan, is marked by the resolution of a lengthy diagnostic odyssey in which exome sequencing revealed the underlying mutated gene responsible for two siblings’ neurological disorder.

    Jan 14, 2013

  • 2013 Best Practices Extension

    Bio-IT World | Bio-IT World is announcing a deadline extension for its 2013 Best Practices awards program. In keeping with extensions given in previous years, the 2013 extended deadline is February 11. 

    Jan 14, 2013

  • SAP's HANA is Ready for Prime Time

    ReadWriteWeb | HANA, SAP's in-memory database, is now ready to run SAP's enterprise resource planning applications. HANA is capable of both data warehousing and transactions--like forecasting--making both processes much faster.

    Jan 14, 2013

  • The Rise of the ARM Server

    Bio-IT World | GUEST COMMENTARY | Two years ago, venture capitalist Hermann Hauser boldly predicted the fall of Intel. The tech giant would be crushed, he said, by the mighty ARM (Advanced RISC Machines) Holdings. Such posturing is not uncommon in the world of technology, but the difference in this case was that Hauser was pointing to the business models of the two companies, not the technology per se.

    Jan 14, 2013

  • Worries for 2013: 150+ Scientific Leaders Chime In

    Edge | Edge has posted its annual question and there are some great responses: essays from Steve Pinker, Craig Venter, Brian Eno, Tim O’Reilly, Simon Baron-Cohen, Terry Sejnowski, Eric Topol, Nicholas Carr, Esther Dyson, Juan Enriquez, and a cast of 130 other scientific leaders.

    Jan 14, 2013

  • NIST Workshop Looks at Variant Calling Standards

    NGS Leaders | Justin Zook and Marc Salit from the National Institute of Standards and Technology report on the NIST workshop Genome in a Bottle, to develop reference materials, reference methods, and reference data to assess confidence in human whole genome variant calls.

    Jan 11, 2013

  • What’s Fueling Our Growing Loss of Faith in Big Science?

    Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider Guest Column| The scientific method is arguably one of the key pillars of Western Civilization. Ironically, the power of science has become so well established that it is now taken as an article of faith by politicians and voters who wouldn’t know the difference between good science and bad if it bit them in the keister. As a result, no society in history has provided as much public, private, and corporate science funding as the United States. 

    Jan 11, 2013