• 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

  • Interpretation and Assembly: New and Needed in Genomics

    Nature Biotechnology | The biggest challenges in genomics now lie in interpretation and assembly. There's been a lot of progress, but there's also more to go. Ten experts discuss the advances and the needs to manage the millions of genomes soon to be sequenced.

    Nov 9, 2012

  • Cray Acquires Appro for Cluster Computing, Increases I/O for New Line

    Bio-IT World Roundup | Cray has signed an agreement to acquire Appro International for $25 million to create a cluster business. The company also discussed a new interconnect, Aries, that will feature a new routing topology that together promise to dramatically improve internal bandwidth.

    Nov 9, 2012

  • American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics Condemns Gene Patent Monopolies

    Bio-IT World | Yesterday, the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) released an official position statement condemning gene patent monopolies that have allowed some to develop proprietary databases of the clinical meaning of the variants in particular genes.   

    Nov 8, 2012

  • Sequencing Reveals Gene Regulation in E. Coli

    Bio-IT World | Eric Schadt and colleagues at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School have used single-molecule real-time (SMRT) DNA sequencing to determine mechanisms of gene regulation in the E. coli bacteria involved in the deadly outbreak in Germany in May-June 2011. Published online today in Nature Biotechnology, the findings provide novel insights on the role of epigenetic DNA base modifications in driving molecular processes of the E. coli strain. 

    Nov 8, 2012

  • Brigham and Women’s Team Wins Clinical Genome CLARITY Challenge

    Bio-IT World | SAN FRANCISCO—A team of computational biologists and clinical geneticists from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston has won the inaugural CLARITY Challenge to identify and present the putative mutations underlying the rare disorders of three children or infants who have received care at Boston Children’s Hospital and had their full genomes sequenced.

    Nov 7, 2012

  • Secure Genomics in the Cloud

    SmartPlanet | Scott Megill, CIO for the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, and Dan Pelino, General Manager of IBM’s Global Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry group, offer up the case for putting genomic data in the cloud.

    Nov 6, 2012

  • How to Design a Better Double Helix

    Bio-IT World | The Double Helix by James D. Watson is not merely a magnificent scientific detective story but one of the classics of 20th century literature. Inspired by the discovery of the lost correspondence of Francis Crick a few years ago, two veteran Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory faculty decided to produce an enhanced edition of the book. On the eve of publication, Bio-IT World invited the editors of the new book, Alex Gann and Jan Witkowski, to discuss the background to the project and preview some of the treasures within.

    Nov 6, 2012

  • High School Student Wins Science Prize

    Huffington Post | 17-year-old Angela Zhang created a nanoparticle that can detect cancer cells, eradicate the cancer cells and then monitor the treatment response.

    Nov 6, 2012

  • Bayer Purchases Cloud App to Analyze Genomic Data

    News Brief | Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals has purchased a new cloud computing application to analyze and visualize multi-dimensional genomics data: OncoGenomics Explorer, a software solution developed by MediSapiens.

    Nov 6, 2012

  • Bio-IT World Launches 2013 Best Practices Program

    Bio-IT World | The 2013 Bio-IT World Best Practices competition has released its Call for Entries. Since 2003, Bio-IT World's Best Practices competition has been recognizing outstanding examples of technology and strategic innovation initiatives across the biomedical and drug discovery enterprise. The deadline for entry is January 11, 2013, and the early bird deadline is December 14, 2012.  

    Nov 5, 2012

  • Expensive Gene Therapy Approved in Europe

    Reuters | Europe has approved an expensive gene therapy. Glybera treats the genetic disorder lipoprotein lipase deficiency (LPLD) and will cost around 1.2 million euros ($1.6 million) per patient.

    Nov 5, 2012

  • Oxford Nanopore and Illumina in Arbitration Regarding Sequencing Partnership

    Bio-IT World | In an analyst research note issued last week, Charles Weston, director of equity research at Numis Securities Ltd in London, spotlighted a legal proceeding between Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Illumina, an early investor in the company. 

    Nov 5, 2012

  • Watson Learns Medicine

    Fast Company | IBM's Watson computer is learning medicine. Through a series of apps and guidance by real oncologists, the computer is practicing diagnoses and storing new disease facts in its database.

    Nov 5, 2012

  • In Conversation: Tufts Geneticist Diana Bianchi on Noninvasive Prenatal Testing

    Bio-IT World | One year after the commercial debut of the first noninvasive prenatal test for aneuploidy by Sequenom, the technology is seeing rapid uptake and development by a handful of diagnostics start-ups. Diana Bianchi, an expert in noninvasive prenatal testing at Tufts Medical Center an to Verinata Health, discusses the exciting advances in this field.

    Nov 5, 2012