• Should Journals Describe How Scientists Made a Killer Flu?

    TIME | This week, the U.S. government did an unprecedented thing by asking two premier research journals, Nature and Science, not to publish the details of Dutch experiments on a genetically engineered, highly tranmissible H5N1 virus, for fear that the information could fall into the wrong hands and be used to create a bioweapon.

    Dec 21, 2011

  • Genomics Gift Guide: Neanderthal Test

    Discovery Magazine | 23andMe is offering a Neanderthal genomic test this holiday season to help identify what percentage of your genome comes frm Neanderthal ancestors. 

    Dec 20, 2011

  • CDISC and IMI Sign Standards Agreement

    Bio-IT World  | The Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (IMI) and the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) have signed an agreement and initiated activities to enhance the use of information gathered for the purpose of developing safer, more effective innovative medicines for patients.    

     

    Dec 19, 2011

  • Microsoft's Evolution

    Wired | Of course Microsft is a cloud company, says Kurt DelBene, but the question keeps coming up. The software giant acknowledges the move to the cloud--and has cloud products to prove it--but still believes its customers need and value desktop and server software. 

    Dec 14, 2011

  • Speeding Up Cancer Trials

    Bio-IT World | The Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (MMRC) has been able to accelerate the clinical trials process by making improvements to trial start-up and enrollment as well as patient accrual for oncology clinical trials run through the Consortium. MMRC presented the data yesterday in an oral presentation at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting. 

    Dec 14, 2011

  • Assemblathon I Offers Lessons in Complex Genome Assembly

    Bio-IT World | The recently published results of the first round of the Assemblathon, while demonstrating the relative quality of the usual suspects in de novo genome assembly (Broad Institute, Sanger Institute, BGI), offer several important lessons in tackling such projects, according to co-organizer Ian Korf.

    Dec 13, 2011

  • Leading Japanese Genomics Researcher Heading to Chicago

    The Daily Yomiuri | Tokyo University's Yusuke Nakamura, arguably the leading genomics researcher in Japan, is stepping down as head of the office promoting medical innovation to take up a new position at the University of Chicago next April, where he will focus on cancer drug discovery.

    Dec 13, 2011

  • Best Practices 2012: Early Deadline Approaching

    Bio-IT World | The early bird deadline for the 2012 Best Practices competition is this Friday. Since 2003, Bio-IT World's Best Practices competition has been recognizing outstanding examples of technology and strategic innovation initiatives across the drug discovery enterprise. 

    Dec 11, 2011

  • Cancer Researchers Migrate En Masse from Dana Farber to MD Anderson

    Boston Globe | MD Anderson Cancer Center has lured 55 scientists away from the Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute after Ron DePinho, the founding director of the Belfer Institute, was chosen as president of MD Anderson.

    Dec 12, 2011

  • Virus-Like Nanoparticles for Gene Therapy

    R&D Magazine | Yale researchers have developed a nanopartical that can mimic a virus and insert a gene into a diseased cell to either kill or repair it. The technique, published Dec. 4 online in Nature Materials, is based on a novel family of polymers.

    Dec 8, 2011

  • Elsevier Acquires Ariadne Genomics

    Bio-IT World | Elsevier, the Dutch publishing giant, has acquired Ariadne Genomics, a software provider of pathway analysis tools and semantic technologies for life science researchers, based in Rockville, MD.  

    Dec 8, 2011

  • IBM Provides NIH Free Chemical Compound Database

    Bio-IT World | IBM, Bristol-Myers Squibb, DuPont, and Pfizer are providing the National Institutes of Health with a database of more than 2.4 million chemical compounds extracted from about 4.7 million patents and 11 million biomedical journal abstracts from 1976 to 2000. The chemical data should help researchers more easily visualize important relationships among chemical compounds to aid in drug discovery and support advanced cancer research.  

     

    Dec 7, 2011

  • Helpful, Harmful, Confusing: Direct-to-Consumer Genomics

    JAMA | James Evans, professor of genetics at the University of North Carolina, is concerned about exome sequencing services like those offered by 23andMe. In a commentary published yesterday in JAMA, Evans and UNC co-author Jonathan Berg argue that whole genome and whole exome sequencing technology “will routinely uncover both trivial and important medical results, both welcome and unwelcome."

    Dec 7, 2011

  • Genomic Health Test Spares Women Unncessary Radiation

    USA TODAY | According to results presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, a new 12-gene test from Genomic Health could spare thousands of women diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) annually by predicting which cases are most likely to be aggressive — requiring both surgery and radiation — versus surgery alone.

    Dec 7, 2011

  • NHGRI Funding Plan Includes Clinical Sequencing, Software and Disease Research

    Bio-IT World | The NHGRI has announced the latest iteration of its flagship genome sequencing program -- worth $416 million over four years -- that features initiatives in the study of rare inherited diseases, software development and accelerates the use of genome sequence information in the clinical arena.

    Dec 6, 2011

  • Crescendo Bioscience’s Aspirations

    Bio-IT World | The Russell Transcript | The rise of personalized medicine—however broadly or narrowly we define it—has been stymied in part by a lack of effective biomarkers. Cancer is perhaps an early and growing exception. The trend to profile a specific patient’s tumor for markers to help physicians pick the best therapeutic regime is a good example of the growing sophistication of biomarkers and their long-term potential as the cost of performing such tests declines.  

     

    Dec 5, 2011

  • H3 Biomedicine: Health, Hope and Heaps of Japanese Funding

    Bio-IT World | The dedication of oncology drug company H3 Biomedicine's sparkling new laboratories in the heart of Kendall Square is more notable for the liberating and possibly unique funding from Japan drug maker Eisai Co., which is provding $200 million over ten years to allow the company to focus on the science of drug discovery and development.  

     

    Dec 2, 2011

  • Why It's Open Science for Allen Brain Institute

    Wall Street Journal | The Allen Institute for Brain Science chose to make all of its data freely available online in an effort to accelerate research on brain diseases. The institute decided in 2002 that the best way to propel neuroscience forward would be to build a molecular-level, three-dimensional map of the mouse brain and give it away. 

    Dec 1, 2011

  • How Data Handling Could Stall Genomic Medicine

    New York Times | BGI's sequencers are now producing the equivalent of 2,000 human genomes a day, and shipping the results to customers via FedEx. Data handling is now the major bottleneck of the genomics industry and it could delay the day when DNA sequencing is used in medicine.

    Nov 30, 2011

  • Science in Thrall to FDA

    Bio-IT World | The Skeptical Outsider | Risk aversion is the inherent enemy of progress. In a free society we can each seek our own balance, accepting the consequences. But when entrenched interests are allowed to thwart attempts by innovators and entrepreneurs to challenge the status quo, we all pay the price. As America slides into malaise and decline, nowhere is this more evident than in our passive acceptance of the absolute power of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration—even in the face of certain death. It need not be so.

    Nov 30, 2011