• Enrolment Update on the Million Veteran Program

    Health Affairs Blog | Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched the Million Veteran Program (MVP) in May of last year, and the program now includes more than 100,000 participants. MVP is a mega-database that will hold genomic and clinical information for future studies about veterans.

    Nov 20, 2012

  • Genomic Sequencing for Newborns Wins Brigham and Women's Prize

    Spoonful of Medicine | Brigham and Women's $100,000 BRIght Futures Prize was awarded to clinical geneticist Robert Green and his project to explore how best to integrate genomic sequencing into routine medical care for healthy newborns. The contest presented three well-vetted finalists to the public and let the winner be chosen by an online vote.

    Nov 19, 2012

  • Genome Variety: Humans a 'Mosaic of Cells with Different Genomes'

    Yale University News | Scientists at Yale School of Medicine have found that the human body is "made up of a mosaic of cells with different genomes." While studying skin cells derived from stem cells, researchers found genetic variation at the cellular level: at least 30% of skin cells displayed varying levels of copy number variations.

    Nov 19, 2012

  • Illumina Offered the Counter Bid for Complete Genomics

    Bloomberg | As suspected by many, Illumina says it was the second bidder for Complete Genomics. Complete rejected Illumina's offer--a 5% premium over the BGI offer--because the deal would have likely been stalled by antitrust regulators. 

    Nov 19, 2012

  • Graph500 Ranks Supercomputers' Agility with Big Data

    Computerworld | A new supercomputing ranking compares how well machines deal with big datasets. The Graph500 benchmark was introduced in 2010 to rank how systems search for data in a large data set.

    Nov 16, 2012

  • Helicos Files Chapter 11

    GEN | Next-gen sequencing company Helicos filed for Chapter 11 protection yesterday. In the filing, Helicos listed $15.478 million in liabilities and only $3.503 million in assets.

    Nov 16, 2012

  • HP Launches Big Data Servers

    eWeek | HP yesterday introduced a new server specifically designed for big data workloads. The ProLiant SL4500 Generation 8 is tuned for petabytes and multiple petabytes.

    Nov 16, 2012

  • Text Mining Reveals Alzheimer's Biomarkers

    Clinical Innovation & Technology | In a study published in the Journal of Translational Medicine , the authors were able to identify 25 biomarker candidates for Alzheimer's disease via the data mining of publicly available databases,

    Nov 15, 2012

  • Janssen Launches Clinical Trial Investigator Database

    eCliniqua | Janssen Research & Development has established a global cross-pharma Investigator Databank designed to improve efficiencies of industry-sponsored clinical trials. The effort is part of the newly-created TransCelerate BioPharma. 

    Nov 15, 2012

  • Digital Body Plots Pains, Prescriptions

    Startupticker | A new personal health record gives users a virtual body model to track their personal health history. Nhumi users tag free text with 3D coordinates recorded on a virtual model of the human anatomy by simply clicking on the body, creating a pin, then dragging the pin to their text.

    Nov 15, 2012

  • Wash U Receives $50m NIH Translational Science Grant

    Phys.org | Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has received a $50 million grant from NIH to help speed the translation of scientific discoveries into improvements in human health. The grant will reportedly help Washington University pursue the goals of the BioMed 21 initiative to encourage cross-disciplinary and translational research.

    Nov 14, 2012

  • Gen9 Announces Winners of Synthetic DNA Contest

    Bio-IT World | Gen9, a developer of scalable technologies for synthesizing and assembling DNA, today announced the five winners of its inaugural G-Prize contest. Collectively, the awardees stand to receive more than 1 million base pairs of DNA manufactured with Gen9’s unique next-generation gene synthesis technology.

    Nov 14, 2012

  • Natera's Prenatal Secret Sauce

    Bio-IT World | When it comes to prenatal testing, it’s a numbers game. Low risk, hormone-based tests are unreliable. The tests have false positive rates of 5%, which means over 120,000 women each year get positive results—high risk results—leading to high stress situations and unnecessary amniocenteses. The flip side is a false negative rate of 15%. Women get the all clear, when in fact something is wrong. Jonathan Sheena, Natera’s Chief Technology Officer, minces no words. “Those numbers are not suitable for this century.”

    Nov 14, 2012

  • Complete Genomics Rejects Counter Bid

    Bio-IT World | Complete Genomics received an unsolicited counter bid on November 5 that could have disrupted the firm's ongoing acquisition by BGI. The bid, from "Party H", was for $3.30 per share, 5% more than the BGI offer price, however Complete Genomics rejected the offer on November 8.

    Nov 14, 2012

  • Algorithm to Decrease Needed Number of ALS Clinical Trial Patients

    San Francisco Business Times | A Stanford University team won $200,000 in the Prize4Life competition for an algorithm to reduce the number of patients in ALS trials.

    Nov 13, 2012

  • Intel Shipping GPU-Competitor Chips: Xeon Phi

    PC Magazine | On Monday, Intel announced it is shipping its Xeon Phi products--a product line specifically targeting competition from NVIDIA and AMD. The Xeon Phi chips are packaged on discrete graphics-like cards and are built to work with Intel's Xeon E5 family of server and workstation CPUs.

    Nov 13, 2012

  • Computational Approach Shows Links Between Schizophrenia, Autism Gene Networks

    Zee News | Using a sophisticated approach, researchers at the Department of Biomedical Informatics, the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and the Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology at Columbia University Medical Center showed linkages between gene mutations associated with schizophrenia and autism.

    Nov 12, 2012

  • Titan Tops Top500 List in Latest Supercomputer Rankings

    Bio-IT World | Weighing in at an impressive 17.59 petaflops, the new Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee has claimed the top slot at the first attempt in the latest Top500 world supercomputing rankings published today. 

    Nov 12, 2012

  • Genomics News and Product Briefs

    Bio-IT World | With the American Society of Human Genetics conference ongoing in San Francisco this week, there’s been a flood of genomics products and news, announced at the event and elsewhere. 

    Nov 9, 2012

  • FDA Releases New IT Strategic Plan

    FDA Blog | Eric Perakslis, FDA’s Chief Information Officer and Chief Scientist for Informatics, reveals the FDA’s new FDA Information Management Strategic Plan this morning in a blog. There is still much to be done to modernize information technology at FDA, Perakslis says.

    Nov 9, 2012