• 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

  • Children’s Hospital Launches CLARITY Challenge for Clinical Genome Interpretation

    Bio-IT World | Researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston have launched the $25,000 CLARITY Challenge, to develop standards and best practices for clinical genomic analysis and interpretation. Project co-founder Isaac Kohane says an open contest is the best way to catalyze "a public and transparent improvement of that pipeline." 

    Jan 23, 2012

  • Remedies for Safer Drugs

    Bio-IT World | Pharmacovigilance experts have an abundance of signal detection tools to sift through large quantities of data seeking causal relationships between adverse events (AEs) and experimental drugs. They also have an assortment of data mining tools capable of finding statistical associations suggestive of problems regarding approved drugs. All this technology is intended to safeguard clinical trial participants, patients, and the reputation of recall-weary drug developers. But drug safety specialists can’t be sure which technology or signal detection method is best.

    Jan 18, 2012

  • Flu Researchers Voluntarily Pause

    Bio-IT World | A group of researchers working on the H5N1 avian flu virus have agreed to a 60-day moratorium on research "to allow time for international discussion." The agreement was published in Science and Nature on Friday via a letter from 39 researchers.

    Jan 20, 2012

  • Fostering Innovation at Sanofi

    Xconomy | Chris Viehbacher, CEO of Sanofi, is focusing on building innovation thanks to last year's acquisition of Genzyme and academic and biotech collaborators.

    Jan 20, 2012

  • Blind Computing with Quantum Physics

    BBC | Computing with quantum physics could carry out fast, complex computations and even increase security in the cloud. "Blind quantum computing" can even be carried out without a cloud computer ever knowing what the data is.

     

    Jan 20, 2012

  • Medidata: Integrating Infrastructure for Clinical Trials

    Bio-IT World | Glen de Vries thought he would be teaching biology or chemistry in college, but somewhere en route to a satisfying career in academic research, he got distracted. Bio•IT World chief editor Kevin Davies spoke to de Vries about the progress of Medidata and the state of e-clinical technology in general. 

      

    Jan 18, 2012

  • Academic Publishers Have Become the Enemies of Science

    The Guardian | British academic Mike Taylor assails the Research Works Act (RWA), introduced in the US Congress last month, which amounts to a declaration of war by for-profit scientific publishers. the result would be "an ethical disaster: preventable deaths in developing countries, and an incalculable loss for science in the USA and worldwide."

    Jan 17, 2012

  • Cracking Open the Scientific Process

    New York Times | Social networking sites such as Berlin-based ResearchGate and meetings liks this weeks ScienceOnline conference in North Carolina are helping to crack open the scientific process.

    Jan 17, 2012

  • A Business Reporter's Personal Genome Journey

    Bloomberg | John Lauerman, a healthy 50-something reporter for Bloomberg, offers a first-person account of his recent decision to enroll in George Church's Personal Genome Project.

    Jan 17, 2012

  • A QuantuMDx Leap for Handheld DNA Sequencing

    Bio-IT World | Speaking for the first time in his life as a commercial consultant rather than a public servant, Sir John Burn, a highly respected clinical geneticist in the United Kingdom, provided the first glimpse at a nanowire technology for rapid DNA genotyping that could eventually mature into the world’s first handheld DNA sequencer.

    Jan 16, 2012