• Pharma Lit: Elsevier Serves Pharma with Acquisitions of Ariadne, Quosa

    Bio-IT World | “We have a history of servicing life sciences and drug discovery/drug development in the pharma industry,” says Alexander van Boetzelaer, managing director of corporate markets for the Dutch publishing giant Elsevier. But while that history is based largely on serving up traditional scientific literature, the needs of the pharma industry are changing, and Elsevier has made several acquisitions to meet those needs.

    Feb 16, 2012

  • Behind the Biogen-Stromedix Deal

    Forbes | Earlier this week Biogen Idec acquired Stromedix, a biotechnology company focused on innovative therapies for fibrosis and organ failure, for up to $526m. Two of the venture capitalists behind Stromedix talk about the startup's history and the path to Biogen.

    Feb 16, 2012

  • Which Grid Engine?

    Bio-IT World | In December 2010, Oracle announced that Grid Engine (a very popular life science cluster scheduler and distributed resource manager that Oracle inherited via its purchase of Sun Microsystems) would no longer be freely available as an open-source product. Oracle's decision to make Grid Engine available only to commercially licensed customers left a large community of scientific and high performance computing users questioning the viability of their long term technical planning and HPC roadmaps. 

    Feb 15, 2012

  • Two Guys and a Credit Card: Metrum’s Amazon Cloud Makeover

    Bio-IT World | Over the past few years, many life science organizations have dabbled in cloud computing and explored infrastructure-as-a-service, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and commitment. But one Connecticut company has decided to go for broke—transferring its entire IT infrastructure onto the Amazon cloud. 

    Feb 14, 2012

  • Mayo Chooses Complete Genomics for Outsourced Sequencing

    Wall Street Cheat Sheet | The Mayo Clinic's Center for Individualized Medicine has chosen Complete Genomics as its provider of outsourced whole human genome sequencing, a move which led to a 51% jump in share price on Monday morning. 

    Feb 14, 2012

  • The New Anti-Science Assault on US Schools

    The Guardian | Not withstanding the famous 2005 Pennsylvania court ruling on intelligent design, anti-evolution campaigners in the United States are now combining with climate change deniers to continue to undermine public education.

    Feb 13, 2012

  • BGI Researchers Report More Evidence of RNA Editing

    Bio-IT World | In a study published online in Nature Biotechnology, BGI researchers have reported evidence of extensive RNA editing in human cells. The paper is a follow up study to last May's Science paper that initially reported sequence differences between mRNA and DNA. 

    Feb 12, 2012

  • The $11 Billion Molecule?

    Forbes | Forbes has posted a new estimate of how much it costs pharmaceutical companies to bring a new drug to market. The result: between $4 and $11 billion per drug, far more than any previous estimate.

    Feb 12, 2012

  • Illumina's Numbers Without Roche

    Motley Fool | Illumina has rejected Roche's most recent offer, and earlier in the week released fourth-quarter numbers that were a bit less than last year's, but still expected. 

    Feb 12, 2012

  • Personalized Medicine Partnership Launches in Florida

    Orlando Sentinel | Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Florida Hospital and Moffitt Cancer Center have teamed to create Personalized Medicine Partnership of Florida.

    Feb 9, 2012

  • Supporting the $1000 Genome

    Forbes | With the $1,000 genomic sequencing barrier looming, the question remains whether we'll be able to make sense of the data to come pouring off sequencers like Life Technologies' new Ion Proton Sequencer.

    Feb 9, 2012

  • San Diego Gets Bulk of California NIH Grants

    San Diego Source | A new PricewaterhouseCoopers report shows that three of the top 10 California recipients of National Institutes of Health grants were in the San Diego area.

    Feb 9, 2012

  • Scientific Collaboration in New York

    Xconomy | The New York Genome Center will open this month, and the New York eHealth Collaborative held its first conference last year. It's been a season of collaboration for scientific organizations in the New York area.

    Feb 9, 2012

  • Laying the Foundation for Next-Gen Cancer Diagnostics

    Bio-IT World | This summer, Foundation Medicine will launch what could be described as the next generation of cancer diagnostics. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company, founded by a premier group of cancer researchers and funded by Third Rock Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures, will launch a comprehensive next-gen sequencing (NGS) profile screening some about 200 genes known to be clinically relevant and actionable in cancer using routine, formalin-fixed paraffin embedded patient cancer specimens. 

    Feb 7, 2012

  • Flatley Flatly Rejects Roche Unsolicited Bid for Illumina

    BusinessWire | Illumina CEO Jay Flatley has informed Roche that its unsolicited tender offer of $44.50 per share is "grossly inadequate in multiple respects, dramatically undervalues Illumina and is contrary to the best interests of Illumina's stockholders."

    Feb 8, 2012

  • Warp Drive Bio Charts Course for Natural Product Drugs

    Bio-IT World | While many major pharma companies have been cutting back their research into natural products, Warp Drive Bio, a new start-up out of Third Rock Ventures in Boston, is dedicated to mining the genome of micro-organisms for potent natural product compounds. And in a striking $125-million deal, Warp Drive has teamed with Sanofi to provide ample funding to get operations off the ground and potentially into orbit. 

    Feb 7, 2012

  • Picture Perfect: Imaging in Drug Discovery and Translational Medicine

    Bio-IT World | Imaging in drug discovery has been rising to the forefront of conversations more and more recently. Managing editor Allison Proffitt spoke with Ken Kilgore, Director of Immunology Pharmacology at Janssen Research & Development (formerly Centocor Research & Development), a Johnson & Johnson company, about how—and why—imaging’s role is changing in drug discovery.

    Feb 7, 2012

  • Roche Calls Illumina Offer 'Full and Fair'

    CNBC | Roche's $44.50/share offering for Illumina is "a full and fair price," Roche CEO Severin Schwan told CNBC. He said the pharma company is "committed to making [the] transaction happen."  

    Feb 5, 2012

  • Norway to Sequence Genomes for National Health Care

    Nature | Norway plans to incorporate genome sequencing into its national health care system. The Norwegian Cancer Genomics Consortium will sequence the tumor genomes of 1,000 patients as part of its three-year pilot phase.

    Feb 5, 2012

  • AGBT Agenda Includes Oxford Nanopore Sighting

    Bio-IT World | The highly anticipated, newly released agenda for the sold-out AGBT conference in two weeks reveals several technology nuggets, including kinetic incorporation data from PacBio, the latest results in benchtop sequencing from Illumina's MiSeq and Ion Torrent's PGM, and data from at least two new NGS systems, including the long-awaited debut of Oxford Nanopore. 

    Feb 1, 2012