• New Drug Approvals Slipped in 2010

    Wall Street Journal | The FDA approved about 21 drugs in 2010, a relatively modest figure that shows the pharmaceutical industry hasn't yet escaped its drought in recent years. The 2010 figures were lower than the 25 drugs approved in 2009 or 24 in 2008, but higher than the low of 18 in 2007. 

    Jan 3, 2011

  • Rothberg's Personal Genome Machine

    Forbes | Jonathan Rothberg's new Personal Genome Machine (PGM) has an 8-inch touchscreen and a dock to link to an iPhone. It's the smallest and cheapest DNA decoder on the market.

    Dec 29, 2010

  • Abuse Possibilities for Genetic Data

    Forbes | There's no federal law against surreptitious DNA testing, and in 2009 New Scientist writer Michael Reilly sucessfully collected a colleague's DNA (from a water glass), had it amplified and sent it to a genetic testing company.

    Dec 29, 2010

  • The Surprising Genetics of Hair Loss

    New York Times | Angela Christiano announced the genetics of alopecia areata, a hair loss disease, last summer. Previously thought to be linked to autoimmune diseases like psoriasis, it turned out to be more closely related to rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and celiac disease.

    Dec 28, 2010

  • Genome Dark Matter

    Wired | Studies published in Nature and Science have begun to shed light on the "activities of the cell," says Peter Park.

    Dec 26, 2010

  • Distributed Bio’s Chris Smith on the Rise of iRODS

    Bio-IT World | Chris Smith, co-founder with ex-Pfizer informatician Giles Day of a new bio-IT consultancy called Distributed Bio, talks about the firm's value proposition, the cloud, and the growing interest in next-gen circles in an open-source data management tool called iRODS. 

    Dec 23, 2010

  • Wisconsin Team Makes Definitive Diagnosis Using 454 Sequencing

    Journal Sentinel Online | Using 454 sequencing, doctors at the Medical College in Wisconsin have published the results of successful exome sequencing in a seriously ill boy with undiagnosed bowel disease. The study revealed mutations in a gene called XIAP, which had not been included among more than 2,000 likely candidate genes before the sequencing was performed. 

    Dec 20, 2010

  • Avila Signs Covalent Drug Pact with Sanofi-Aventis

    Bio-IT World | Avila Therapeutics, the Waltham, MA-based drug discovery company commercializing covalently bound small molecule compounds, has announced a significant strategic alliance with Sanofi-Aventis for the development of cancer drugs. 

    Dec 20, 2010

  • Final Four Weeks for 2011 Best Practices Awards Entries

    Bio-IT World | It’s down to the final four weeks for entries in the 2011 Bio-IT World Best Practices Awards.   

    Dec 20, 2010

  • SNAP Comes Up Trumps at Inaugural CAGI Competition

    Nature.com | Rutgers University bioinformatician Yana Bromberg's SNAP program won top honors at the inaugural Critical Assessment of Genome Interpretation (CAGI) competition, convened last week by University of California Berkeley's Steven Brenner.

    Dec 17, 2010

  • 23andMe Scores NIH Funding for Pharmacogenetics Research

    Fast Company | Consumer genomics company 23andMe has received a $190,000 grant to study "web-based phenotyping for genome-wide association studies of drug response" from the NIH.

    Dec 17, 2010

  • Meet the Genome Bloggers

    Nature News | Set your genome free on the internet, and it might come back to you with some surprising interpretations. Projects such as the Dodecad Ancestry Project and the Eurogenes Ancestry Project are analyzing personal ancestry and human population history and reporting the findings online.

    Dec 15, 2010

  • HHMI Launches International Early Career Scientist Competition

    HHMI | The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has launched an international competition to select up to 35 early career scientists working at academic institutions in 18 countries on five continents with the goal of helping these talented individuals establish independent research programs.

    Dec 14, 2010

  • Ion Torrent’s $3-Million Community Incentive Plan

    Bio-IT World | Ion Torrent, the next-generation sequencing company founded by Jonathan Rothberg that was recently acquired by Life Technologies, is offering three $1-million prizes to any researcher(s) or programmer(s) that come up with major enhancements in the speed, quantity and accuracy of the company’s newly released Personal Genome Machine (PGM).  

    Dec 14, 2010

  • Deadly Trials

    Vanity Fair | As more clinical trials move overseas, are the results of those trials applicable to Americans? Are they safe? Vanity Fair argues that overseas trials are beyond the reach of FDA and are conducted where "regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and “mistakes” can end up in pauper’s graves."

    Dec 12, 2010

  • Panasonic, imec Announce Lab-on-Chip for SNP Detection

    Bio-IT World | Panasonic and imec have announced components of a lab-on-a-chip sensor enabling SNP detection. The technology was presented this week at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco and included  various a miniaturized pump for on-chip generation of high pressures, a micropillar filter optimized for DNA separation achieving world-record resolution, and a SNP detector allowing on-chip detection using very small sample volumes.

    Dec 10, 2010

  • Break Out: Pacific Biosciences Team Identifies Asian Origin for Haitian Cholera Bug

    Bio-IT World | In a dramatic piece of genetic detective work, Pacific Biosciences and Harvard Medical School researchers have decoded the sequence of the strain of bacteria responsible for the deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti. The findings, which confirm the putative Asian origin for the devastating outbreak, are published online in the New England Journal of Medicine today. 

    Dec 9, 2010

  • Complete Genomics Adds CNV Analysis to Cancer Sequencing

    Xconomy | Complete Genomics is amping up its efforts to sequence cancer genomes. As an addition to its $10,000 sequencing service, the company plans to run basic computational analysis for all the copy number variations, and structural variations in tumors at no extra cost.

    Dec 8, 2010

  • Broad Updates Molecular Signatures Database

    Bio-IT World | Researchers at the Broad Institute have released MSigDB 3.0, the most comprehensive molecular signatures database to date. MSigDB is a database of annotated gene sets that has become a standard tool for gaining insights from the results of genomic studies.

    Dec 7, 2010

  • Pfizer CEO Kindler Retires

    Reuters | Pfizer CEO, Jeffrey Kindler, retired unexpectedly the company announced late on Sunday. He is being replaced by the gobal head of pharmaceuticals, Ian Read.

    Dec 5, 2010