• Dozens Of New Genetic Risk Factors For Alzheimer’s Disease Identified

    Bio-IT World | A meta-analysis of new and previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has identified 75 genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), 42 of which weren’t previously implicated. The investigation confirms the importance of two pathological brain phenomena that are currently pursued therapeutic targets and strengthens the case for having microglial cells join the hit list, according to Jean-Charles Lambert, research director at Inserm (National Institute of Health and Medical Research) based in Lille, France.

    May 18, 2022

  • Expert Panel: Inclusion and Diversity in Life Sciences and Precision Medicine

    Bio-IT World | Bio-IT World Conference & Expo panelists discussed how diversity, equity, and inclusion are critical to the efficacy of precision medicine. Moderator Kevin Ileka, Bristol Myers Squibb Co., was joined by Adrian Coles, Bristol Myers Squibb Co.; Ari Berman, BioTeam Inc; Lori Lennon, Thinkubator Media; and Victoria Parker, NOBCChE.

    May 17, 2022

  • Data Transformation, AI, and Data Platforms That Work

    Bio-IT World | Chris Dagdigian wasn’t the only one reporting from the IT trenches last week. The Bio-IT World Conference & Expo’s annual Trends from the Trenches panel also featured three other BioTeam consultants: Adam Kraut, Michelle Bayly, and Anna Sowa. The three reported on their own observations in their capacities as BioTeam consultants: focusing on leadership trends, platform best practices, and AI.

    May 13, 2022

  • Ten Year Trends, Covid’s Impact, Where Dagdigian Was Wrong

    Bio-IT World | At Bio-IT World’s 20th anniversary event last week, Chris Dagdigian and friends from BioTeam, once again closed out programming with a rapid-fire look at the bio-IT landscape and an IT trends assessment—calling out what is working, what’s not, and how it’s all evolving.

    May 12, 2022

  • Sequencing-Based Initiative Now Exploring How Best To Return The Findings

    Bio-IT World | A pioneering program of Geisinger Health System has returned clinically actionable results from exome sequencing to a record-breaking 3,400 individuals at increased risk for potentially life-threatening conditions such as hereditary breast and colon cancers, familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), and heart disease. The MyCode Community Health Initiative, enabled by a 2014 agreement with Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, draws from participants in a sizable DNA biobank who agree to the sequencing and results reporting.

    May 11, 2022

  • Overcoming Challenges in NGS Target Enrichment

    Bio-IT World | The advancement of next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies has represented a large step forward in the speed and throughput of sequencing capabilities and make it more affordable to sequence an entire genome. While NGS has dramatically lowered the cost of sequencing a sample, it can still be relatively costly to sequence an entire genome if you are only interested in a small portion of it. For these situations, target enrichment can be used to selectively sequence regions of interest.

    May 9, 2022

  • Bio-IT World Judges, Community Honor Six Outstanding New Products

    Bio-IT World | Bio-IT World announced Best of Show awards yesterday evening at the Bio-IT World Conference and Expo. The new products awards program, which has not been held since 2019, recognizes innovative solutions to important problems facing the life sciences industry. The judges named six award winners and the Bio-IT World community chose a People’s Choice Award.

    May 5, 2022

  • George Church on 4D Omics, Natural Computing, and the BioWeatherMap

    Bio-IT World | George Church opened the 20th Anniversary Bio-IT World Conference & Expo last night, speaking virtually to a packed room at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center while many more attendees tuned in online.

    May 4, 2022

  • Best of Show Awards Highlights New Products in Bio-IT

    Bio-IT World | Bio-IT World is pleased to announce the competitors in the 2022 Best of Show competition with the Bio-IT World People’s Choice Award. Voting begins today.

    May 3, 2022

  • Follow the Money: Next-Gen Data-Driven Precision Medicine Development, DNA Synthesis Technology, More

    Bio-IT World | Funding for programmable biology and chemistry in medicine development, DNA synthesis, immune-oncology cancer therapeutics, and more.

    Apr 29, 2022

  • Simultaneous CNV and Mutation Detection Method; AI-Enhanced Brain Imaging; More

    Bio-IT World | AI and ML in clinical trials, metabolomics-based diagnostics, T-cell receptor engineering for cancer treatment, and cardiovascular disease drug development, new genomics efforts in Brazil, laboratory automation and risk management solutions, and more.

    Apr 27, 2022

  • James Cuff on Networks, Cloud, and the Problem that Drew Him Out of Retirement

    Bio-IT World | James Cuff summarizes his career over the past 25 years or so, outlining where he’s seen updates in the space and which things have fundamentally stayed the same. He also shares about the problem that’s been bugging him for the past five years and the new company he’s joined that could fix it.

    Apr 26, 2022

  • PacBio Announces ML Methylation Calling, New Software, Consumables

    Bio-IT World | Pacific Biosciences announced broad updates to its Sequel IIe and Sequel II Systems today including new capabilities in DNA methylation detection and workflow improvements promising a 50% decrease in NGS sequencing workflow and a 40% decrease in needed sample.

    Apr 21, 2022

  • Stanford: ‘Clinical Grade’ Long-Read Genome Sequencing Is Here

    Bio-IT World | A Stanford team led by Euan Ashley, professor of medicine, genetics and biomedical data science, sequenced a patient’s genome in a snappy five hours and two minutes on a PromethION platform from Oxford Nanopore, an achievement ratified by the Genome in a Bottle Consortium of the National Institute of Science and Technology.

    Apr 20, 2022

  • Genomic Consortium Diversifies Data, Explores Genomics of Body Measurements

    Bio-IT World | Genomic studies can benefit from leveraging diverse ancestries to make new discoveries about health and disease, write the authors of a new paper published in Human Genetics and Genomics Advances. They have launched a consortium focused on the genetics of Hispanic and Latin American populations.

    Apr 19, 2022

  • Whole Genome Covid-19 Sequencing Study Proves WGS Ready for Therapeutic Development

    Bio-IT World | Last month an international team of researchers published whole genome sequencing results comparing thousands of individuals with critical Covid-19 to a control group, discovering and replicating 23 independent variants that significantly predispose an individual to critical Covid-19. The exercise yielded fruit for very large scale whole genome sequencing projects as well.

    Apr 14, 2022

  • Automated Data Cleaning and AI Pipelines for Increased Enterprise-Wide Adoption

    Bio-IT World | The current data-rich era comes with a tremendous number of caveats. Large quantities of data are not necessarily high quality. Quality, in this case, can be used to describe the ease with which a user can obtain useful insights. Here we look at practices within a business that can maintain data integrity to prepare it for automated AI pipelines among other uses.

    Apr 13, 2022

  • The Right Questions: Bayer’s Approach to Data Challenges and COVID-19

    Bio-IT World | The way Jeanne Kehren sees it, pharma either has data graveyards, or “We are building data lakes without thinking about getting a boat.” Neither option advances the life sciences mission. As SVP and CIO at Bayer, Kehren is working toward a new vision of how pharma uses data, what it means to ask the right question, and how the healthcare industry as a whole can serve patients. COVID-19, she said, has been both a magnifier of some of our challenges and an opportunity.

    Apr 12, 2022

  • Bio-IT World Names 2022 Innovative Practices Awards Winners

    Bio-IT World | Bio-IT World today announced the 2022 Innovative Practices Awards winners. Four grand prize awards were granted to AstraZeneca, Guardant Health with IQVIA, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, with Genedata, and Quantum Leap Healthcare Collaborative / University of California San Francisco with OpenClinica. The awards ceremony will be held during the plenary program on Tuesday, May 3, at the 2022 Bio-IT World Conference & Expo in Boston.

    Apr 11, 2022

  • Scientists Finally Finish The Quest For A Gapless Human Genome

    Bio-IT World | There was no escaping last week’s announcement that the final 8% of the human genome—the equivalent of an entire DNA chromosome—has been sequenced, filling a gap left nearly 20 years after the Human Genome Project declared victory. More than 100 researchers from around the world collaborated on the initiative and many of them, and the institutions they represent, have weighed in on the feat.

    Apr 7, 2022