• 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

  • Vertex’ Newly Approved Cystic Fibrosis Drug Illustrates Hopes and Challenges of Treating Rare Diseases

    Bio-IT World | In a triumph for cystic fibrosis research, Vertex Pharmaceuticals has received FDA approval for Kalydeco (ivacaftor, VX-770), a drug that treats a subset of CF patients, raising a debate on the future of personalized medicine and the treatment of rare diseases.

    Feb 1, 2012

  • No Spin Zone: Nimbus Launches E Class Flash Storage

    Bio-IT World | Could this be the beginning of the end of spinning media? Nimbus Data Solutions has launched its highest performance flash memory system, the E class, touting major improvements in scalability, power consumption, cooling efficiency and density. “It’s a chance to reinvent storage for performance and efficiency,” CEO Thomas Isakovich told Bio-IT World.  

     

    Jan 31, 2012

  • Phoenix Supercomputer Gateway to Personalized Medicine

    Arizona Republic | A massive building near Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport -- the CSS Institute -- is now home to a supercomputer that one day is expected to store clinical-research reports, medical records and the decoded genetic makeup of millions of patients and their cancers.

    Jan 30, 2012

  • What is (Quantitative) Systems Pharmacology?

    Bio-IT World | Last October, Harvard Medical School announced a broad initiative in systems pharmacology while the NIH released a like-minded white paper on quantitative and systems pharmacology in the post-genomic era. That's a fair amount of attention from two very big guns on a topic that may ring both familiar and unfamiliar.

    Jan 18, 2012

  • Branding Academic Publishers 'Enemies of Science' is Offensive

    The Guardian | Noting that scientific publishers "are not philanthropists, charities or funding agencies," a member of the industry pens a rebuttal to recent staunch criticism that academic publishers are "anti-science" and "anti-publication" in light of the proposed US Research Works Act.

    Jan 27, 2012

  • Accelrys' Cheminformatics Solution in HEOS Cloud

    Bio-IT World | The Accelrys next-generation informatics suite consists of updated existing products and components, but perhaps most noteworthy is the marriage with a cloud-based product called HEOS, in partnership with Scynexis, for externalizing research. 

    Jan 25, 2012

  • UK Scientists Call For National DNA Database for Personalized Medicine

    Daily Telegraph | In a report to the UK government, a group of UK scientists argues that a national DNA database is needed if the National Health Service is to capitalise on advances in technology and offer personalised genomic medicine to all in the future.

    Jan 26, 2012

  • Bush Doctrine: The Pharmaceutical Safety Data Problem

    Bio-IT World | The Bush Doctrine: What the industry calls “safety data” covers everything from discovery-oriented in vitro or cell based studies to extensive GLP toxicology study data, voluminous clinical study records, and post-marketing/pharmacovigilance systems. It leads one to wonder: does anyone have informatics systems that allow safety investigators across the pharma enterprise to effectively mine this ocean of information? 

    Jan 19, 2012

  • Roche Launches Hostile Bid for Illumina to Reclaim Next-Gen Sequencing Mantle

    New York Times | Roche, the Swiss drug maker, has launched a $5.7 billion hostile bid for Illumina, going directly to the company’s shareholders. In early trading, Illumina shares soared some 40%, trading above the $44.50 Roche was willing to offer.

    Jan 25, 2012

  • Good Days and Bad in 2011

    Bio-IT World | Physicists seem to be having all the fun right now -- monster black holes, inhabitable planets, glimpses of God particles and hearty challenges to Einstein. But a list of last year's top ten science stories in the Guardian found room for only a couple of items in contemporary biology. 

    Jan 24, 2012