• 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

  • AI Betting Agents Weigh In On Reproducibility Of Research Findings

    Bio-IT World | Penn State researchers have created synthetic “prediction markets” for speculating on the replicability of published studies with unparalleled accuracy. When betting on published social and behavioral science papers, about 90% of the time bot agents correctly “bought” papers that were eventually reproduced.

    Apr 5, 2022

  • Follow the Money: Single-Cell Analysis, Spatial Biology, Drug-Resistant Infection Treatments, 3D Genomics

    Bio-IT World | Funds raised for life science company investment, AI-powered single-cell analysis, spatial biology, ML-based discovery of new anti-infectives, and real-time supply chain operations analysis.

    Mar 31, 2022

  • New Illumina Accelerator Start-Ups, Blood Test for Liver Cancer, Several New Collaborations, Software Offerings, More

    Bio-IT World | A genomic network model is used to identify aurora kinase inhibitor-sensitive lung tumors, new Illumina Accelerator start-ups are announced, AI algorithms are being used to improve prostate cancer identification and treatment, and a blood-based DNA methylation test can detect liver cancer

    Mar 30, 2022

  • Digitization Vs. Digital Transformation at Alnylam

    Bio-IT World | Jim Bilotta found his home in orphan diseases early in his career, driven by both personal experience and the “unbelievable” impact on patients and their families. Today, as Chief Information Officer, head of IT, at Alnylam, he is still pursuing that impact. In the latest episode of Bio-IT World’s Trends from the Trenches podcast, Bilotta and Trends from the Trenches host, Stan Gloss, discuss digital transformation at Alnylam, and how Bilotta views the distinction between digitization and digital transformation.

    Mar 29, 2022

  • How Life Science Companies Can Harness the Predictive Value of Data to Drive Deeper Process Understanding

    Bio-IT World | As the biopharmaceutical industry begins to embrace advanced data collection and analysis tools, it finds itself facing a challenging question: How can drug manufacturers best harness all that data to improve capacity, reduce bottlenecks and cut costs? Establishing a strong digital backbone is the first critical step. From there, manufacturers need to figure out how to strengthen this digital backbone with technology that not only makes the data easily accessible, but also empowers manufacturers to analyze it and use it to make transformative predictions.

    Mar 28, 2022

  • Antibody That Opens Blood-Brain Barrier Might Also Ferry Lifesaving Drugs

    Bio-IT World | A future where single-chain nanobodies and biologically active proteins might voyage through the blood-brain barrier to treat neurological conditions—including Alzheimer’s disease and brain tumors—recently came closer into view with the discovery of an antibody that succeeded in temporarily opening and resealing the crucial filtering mechanism in mice.

    Mar 25, 2022

  • Blueprint For Radically Open, Citizen Science Approach To Aging Research

    Bio-IT World | Leonid Peshkin, Ph.D., is an unconventional man working at an Ivy League research university in a field he believes is rightfully viewed with “great skepticism” by mainstream biologists. The war on aging he is advancing puts to the test both interventions designed to extend healthspan (the period of life where one is healthy) and our understanding how the ravages of time get undone in the germline, an approach he likens to a Russian “Koschei” fairy tale where the secret to eternal health is in the egg.

    Mar 23, 2022

  • All of Us Program Releases 100K Diverse Whole Genomes

    Bio-IT World | Nearly 100,000 highly diverse whole genome sequences are now available through the National Institutes of Health's All of Us Research Program, the NIH announced today. About 50% of the data is from individuals who identify with racial or ethnic groups that have historically been underrepresented in research. This data will enable researchers to address yet unanswerable questions about health and disease, leading to new breakthroughs and advancing discoveries to reduce persistent health disparities.

    Mar 18, 2022

  • Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Explores Trends and Innovations Leading Life Sciences

    Bio-IT World | The Bio-IT World Conference & Expo kicks off the first week in May, back in its pre-pandemic Spring timeslot. We are looking forward to joining the Bio-IT community both in person and virtually and exploring the progress the community has made over the past two years. While the program is packed full of sessions to flag, here are the sessions outside of the track schedule that we are highlighting

    Mar 17, 2022

  • Element Biosciences Launches Benchtop Sequencer

    Bio-IT World | Element Biosciences has launched the Element AVITI System, a benchtop sequencer offering an unrivaled combination of performance, cost, and flexibility. Element’s proprietary Avidity Sequencing chemistries enable exceptional accuracy and cost efficiency that is unmatched by other benchtop systems, according to the company.

    Mar 15, 2022

  • New Tactic Proposed To Find Drugs For Alzheimer’s Disease

    Bio-IT World | A new method to screen drugs for treating Alzheimer’s disease could significantly improve the odds of therapeutic success by analyzing causal mechanisms in human neurons, according to Shankar Subramaniam, professor of bioengineering at the University of California (UC) San Diego. The plan now is to extend the work to organoids with microglia cells and vasculature, creating “realistic human brain avatars” for better understanding disease endotypes and their response to treatment.

    Mar 10, 2022

  • How to Manage Data as an Asset: Opinions from a Fortune 5 Executive

    Bio-IT World | As Executive Director of Enterprise Data Engineering and Analytics at CVS Health, Saira Kazmi uses her background in computer science and engineering in both academic and industry positions to inform her new role. She learned about the importance of iterative testing under the tightest timelines from the industry and got a first-hand view of the engineering rigor required to enable bioinformatics from her academic career. Now she is focused on creating data assets and managing the data life cycle at the enterprise level for a major healthcare player.

    Mar 8, 2022

  • Hormone-Producing Intestinal Cells Could Be Tapped As A Weight-Loss Remedy

    Bio-IT World | An organoid model is being used to flush out what’s behind production of a rare subset of cells in the human intestine and the hormones they manufacture, including four that seem to have the most effect on decreasing appetite.

    Mar 7, 2022