• Lilly Pledges Millions to Biotech

    Bloomberg | Yesterday Eli Lilly announced plans to make a mulitmillion-dollar investment in its biotech business, but declined to give a specific number.

    Jun 29, 2011

  • Sequencing Devils to Save a Species

    USA Today | Scientists from Penn State and the J. Craig Venter Institute have sequenced the genomes of Cedric and Spirit, a pair of Tasmanian Devils, in the hopes of saving the marsupial species that is threatened with extinction due to the rapid spread of an infectious facial cancer.

    Jun 28, 2011

  • Researchers Cry Foul on Ion Torrent License and Inventors’ Rights

    Bio-IT World |  A pair of former advisors to Ion Torrent Systems, the semiconductor sequencing company acquired by Life Technologies in a deal potentially worth as much as $725 million, are upset about the exclusive licensing deal negotiated with the company by the Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing, which they say is symptomatic of the mistreatment of academic inventors by their employers. One of those researchers, Nader Pourmand, says his first annual royalty check was just $2,300. 

    Jun 27, 2011

  • HHMI, Max Planck Society and Wellcome Trust Plan Open Access Journal

    HHMI News | Three scientific organizations -- the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust -- plan to launch a high-impact, open access journal in 2012. The journal will be edited by "experienced and actively actively practicing" scientists who will avoid asking authors to perform endless additional experiments before a paper can be published. 

     

    Jun 27, 2011

  • 23andMe Reports Novel Parkinson's Disease Gene Associations

    PLoS Genetics | In a report in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, researchers at 23andMe studying some 3,500 Parkinson's Disease patients report two novel genome-wide associations with the disease and confirm about 20 others.

    Jun 24, 2011

  • Lilly CEO Lobbies for More Green Cards to Boost Pharma

    Bloomberg | The CEO of Eli Lilly, John Lechleiter, says the U.S. Government needs to open its borders and issue more Green Cards to attract and retrain foreign drugmaking research talent. 

    Jun 24, 2011

  • VAAST Potential for New Genome Mutation Hunting Software

    Bio-IT World | Scientists at the University of Utah and a Bay Area software company, Omicia, have released details in two new reports of a powerful computational tool called VAAST for identifying disease-causing mutations by individual genome sequencing.

    Jun 23, 2011

  • There's an iPad App for the Human Genome

    Researchers from the Center for Biomedical Informatics (CBMi) at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia led by Peter White have created a free iPad app called "Genome Wowser," which provides a mobile interface to data from the venerable UC Santa Cruz genome browser. 

    Jun 23, 2011

  • Refer an Software Engineer, Get Your Genome Sequenced

    Bio-IT World | In an effort to recruit dozens of top-notch software engineers, a Bay Area software company, DNAnexus, is offering a unique incentive for successful referrals: $20,000 + your full genome sequence.  

    Jun 23, 2011

  • Japan Rises to Reclaim Top 500 Supercomputing Title

    Asahi Shimbun | Japan has reclaimed the supercomputing crown for the first time in seven years in the latest Top500 supercomputer rankings with the K computer, a machine jointly developed by Fujitsu and the RIKEN research institute. The K computer boasts more than three times the speed of China's second-ranked Tianhe-1A.

    Jun 22, 2011

  • University of Iowa Develops Genetic Diagnostic Test for Hearing Loss

    Bio-IT World | University of Iowa researchers in the Molecular Otolaryngology and Renal Research Labs (MORL) are utilizing GenomeQuest’s clinical decision support system, GQ-Dx, to develop a first-of-its-kind molecular diagnostic test for individuals with hearing loss. GenomeQuest announced the clinical decision-support system for whole-genome diagnostics today. 

    Jun 21, 2011

  • Panasas ActiveStor Storage Goes to 11

    Bio-IT World | Seeing growth opportunities in private clouds, life sciences and next-generation sequencing data management, Panasas had unveiled the latest version of its ActiveStor storage product line at the International Supercomputing Conference in Germany.   

    Jun 20, 2011

  • Everything You Know Is Wrong

    Bio-IT World | I’m new to your neighborhood, a refugee from the telecommunications and semiconductor industries where I spent the last thirty years living under the relentless Darwinian pressure of Moore’s Law: better, faster, cheaper, or die. Examining your world of drug development, medical practice, and health care delivery in what economists euphemistically call a “mixed economy” will be a bit of an Alice-through-the-looking-glass experience. With your forbearance I’d like to ask some questions, and share some wonder and dismay. Maybe we’ll both learn something.

    Jun 20, 2011

  • Whole Genome Sequencing Identifies Key Mutations in Fraternal Twins

    Houston Chronicle | The teenage fraternal twins of LIfe Technologies CIO Joe Beery, both diagnosed with dopa-responsive dystonia, are thriving following the identification of key mutations affecting neurotransmitter production using whole-genome sequencing performed by a team at the Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) genome center, and published in Science Translational Medicine.

    Jun 15, 2011

  • 23andMe Reaches 100,000 Records in DNA Database

    San Jose Mercury News | Consumer genomics company 23andMe has announced that it has built what co-founder Anne Wojcicki calls one of the world's largest DNA databases, with the number of people exceeding 100,000.

    Jun 15, 2011

  • Watching Protein Misfolding with Jaguar

    Oak Ridge National Laboratory | Researchers at North Carolina State University have figured out how copper induces misfolding in teh protein associated with Parkinson's disease, thanks to the Jaguar supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

    Jun 14, 2011

  • IntraLinks Survey Highlights Need for e-Clinical Document Exchange Tools

    Bio-IT World | One week ahead of the annual Drug Information Association (DIA) conference, a new survey conducted on behalf of IntraLinks by CenterWatch, reveals a dearth of use in web-based tools for clinical document exchange. 

     

    Jun 14, 2011

  • Genome Scan Predicts Splicing Mutations

    Bio-IT World | According to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, nearly one third of the mutations listed in the Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD) may be caused by splicing errors in mRNA. “Splicing mutations are already known to be a large fraction, but we’re saying they are even more,” said William Fairbrother, assistant professor of biology at Brown University and senior author of the study. 

    Jun 12, 2011

  • Illumina Halves Sequence Costs, Launches iPad App

    Bio-IT World | Confirming hunches in the industry, Jay Flatley annouced another price drop in Illumina's Individual Genome Sequencing (IGS) service. At the Consumer Genetics Show in Boston, the Illumina president and CEO knocked $10,000 from the price of individual genome sequencing, bringing the service to $9,500.   

     

    Jun 9, 2011

  • Decision Support in High Definition

    Bio-IT World | A high-definition touch screen that fosters collaboration by enabling drug developers to manipulate molecules, much like Tom Cruise sifting through a crime scene in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, was the high point of Bryn Roberts’ keynote on novel decision support technologies at the 2011 Bio-IT World Conference.

     

    Jun 9, 2011