• PacBio: Year of Expansion, Whole-Genome Clinical Goals

    Bio-IT World | At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference yesterday, PacBio’s new CEO, laid out a route to the clinic for PacBio’s HiFi sequencing reads, and set a 2021 goal of expansion across the business: improving commercial footprint, driving product development pipelines, and establishing market leadership in whole-genome clinical sequencing.

    Jan 15, 2021

  • Novel, Short Form of ACE2, AI Learns ‘Language’ of Viral Mutations, Odd Structure of ORF8: COVID-19 Updates

    Bio-IT World I Single-dose nanoparticle vaccine triggers strong immune response in mice, mapping the unique structure of SARS-CoV-2 ORF8 protein, COVID-19 may eventually become as mild as common cold. Plus: Human lung bronchioalveolar tissue model successfully demonstrates viral replication along with potential therapy and mitochondria one of the first lines of defense.

    Jan 15, 2021

  • 10x Genomics’ Million Cell Platform, High Def Spatial Transcriptomics, More

    Bio-IT World | Serge Saxonov, CEO and co-founder of 10x Genomics, painted a rosy picture of the future of single-cell technologies at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. And 10x has the product suite to enable that future, including a new version of the Chromium platform, a higher resolution version of the Visium platform, a coming In Situ platform, a wider rollout of the 10x Cloud, and new tools to address sample prep and cost.

    Jan 14, 2021

  • PacBio, Invitae Announce Plans To Build New Sequencing Platform

    Bio-IT World | Pacific Biosciences and Invitae today announced a multi-year collaboration to begin development of a production-scale high-throughput sequencing platform leveraging the power of PacBio’s highly accurate HiFi sequencing to expand Invitae’s whole genome testing capabilities.

    Jan 13, 2021

  • Reversing The Aging Clock With Epigenetic Reprogramming

    Bio-IT World | As aging researchers are aware, “birthday candles are not a good guide” to either human health or longevity. But there is an abundance of clues in the genome and, as suggested by studies in animals, some of age-related damage is reversible by removing or reprogramming problematic cells or blocking the activity of key proteins.

    Jan 13, 2021

  • Illumina at JPM: Cloud Analytics Platform, More Diagnostics Focus, Sequencing Updates To Come

    Bio-IT World | At the 39th Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco today, Illumina CEO Francis deSouza outlined Illumina’s take on the genomics market, made partnership announcements, and launched Illumina Connected Analytics, an expanding software analytics platform. deSouza did not announce any new sequencing platforms, though he teased updates coming in 2021.

    Jan 11, 2021

  • Seqster Releases v7.1 on Azure

    Bio-IT World | Kicking off news from the J.P. Morgan 39th Annual Healthcare Conference, Seqster announced the release of Seqster Platform v7.1 on the Microsoft Azure cloud this morning.

    Jan 11, 2021

  • Math Model Predicts Optimal Treatments, Reducing Infectious Period Could Save Millions, Illumina Tracks Variants: COVID-19 Updates

    Bio-IT World I New hybrid approach identifies existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat SARS-CoV-2 and Cellid signs research contract with the International Vaccine Institute to expedite clinical development of “AdCLD-CoV-19” COVID-19 vaccine. Plus: Illumina and Helix will track the emergence and prevalence of new strains, including the highly transmissible B.1.1.7 variant.

    Jan 8, 2021

  • Trendspotting: What’s Coming For Bio-IT In 2021

    Bio-IT World | When we spoke with the Bio-IT World vendor community, leaders reported working hard to synthesize what 2020 brought us and apply those learnings to 2021. As they each made predictions in their own business areas, some themes arose.

    Jan 7, 2021

  • Charles River Labs Acquires Distributed Bio

    Bio-IT World | Charles River Laboratories acquired Distributed Bio on December 31, 2020. The acquisition marks the culmination of an exclusive partnership between these companies that was initiated in October 2018.

    Jan 6, 2021

  • Bizarre Effects Of Sound Waves Could Benefit Drug Delivery, Exosome Therapy

    Bio-IT World | Scientists at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a nebulizer for delivering drugs and vaccines to the lungs by generating high-frequency sound waves on a microchip. Serendipitously, the device generates droplets “just the right size”—between 1 and 5 microns—for large molecules such as DNA and antibodies to reach the deep lungs.

    Jan 6, 2021

  • WGS Market Foothold, New Life Sciences Doc Management, Algorithm For Neoantigen ID, More

    Bio-IT World | Illumina and Harvard Pilgrim announce risk sharing for whole genome sequencing, new cryo-EM from Thermo Fisher, LSBio acquires Absolute Antibody, Presearch digitizes hand-written lab notes, and more.

    Jan 4, 2021

  • Google Wades Into Controversy with Dismissal of AI Ethicist Timnit Gebru

    Bio-IT World | Google got ensnared in a controversy over AI ethics when it let go its AI ethicist Timnit Gebru in a dispute over a research paper on large language models she had submitted to a conference.

    Dec 30, 2020

  • Top Stories of 2020: Pharma’s Digital Plan, Data Commons, AI and Quantum Computing. And COVID-19

    Bio-IT World | While much of the biotech and life sciences fields shifted to focus energy and efforts into understanding SARS-CoV-2 and the disease it causes, these weren’t the year’s only developments. This year Bio-IT World has covered growing data commons efforts, announced our annual Innovative Practices Award winners, looked at how Big Pharma is doing data science, delved into COVID-19 updates, and much more.

    Dec 29, 2020

  • Musings on the Pros and Cons of Apache Airflow

    Bio-IT World | TRENDS FROM THE TRENCHES—We are routinely asked questions about Apache Airflow: when to use it, how to get the most out of it, and what to watch out for. Here’s why The BioTeam believes Apache Airflow is one of the most critical tools in the toolbox of a data scientist.

    Dec 22, 2020

  • Follow the Money: Spatial Omics, CAR-NK Cells, AI-Powered Biology

    Bio-IT World | Funding updates around the life sciences including cash for a handheld mass spec device, Series D for oncolytic immunotherapy, a new company launch in allogenic CAR-NK cells, AI-powered cell classification, a 3-D sequencing platform, and more.

    Dec 21, 2020

  • Immunai Joins 10x To Scale Single Cell Genomics

    Bio-IT World | Immunai has announced its collaboration with 10x Genomics as one of the first 10x Certified Service Providers. Immunai will leverage 10x’s robust single-cell technologies to map hundreds of cell types and states. By applying its proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, Immunai supports biomarker discovery and insight generation to ultimately power new therapeutic discoveries and accelerate drug development.

    Dec 21, 2020

  • Mortality Data For 25-44 Year Olds, Characteristics of High and Low Viral Cases: COVID-19 Updates

    Bio-IT World | Human “helper proteins” aiding the virus, genes linked with disease severity, the potency of neutralizing antibodies, and AI system identifying drugs. Plus: PacBio and Labcorp generate 65,000 genomes and funding from Germany and DARPA.

    Dec 18, 2020

  • Emedgene Automated Interpretation Software Integrated Into Illumina TruSight Software Suite

    Bio-IT World | Emedgene has announced a non-exclusive partnership with Illumina and the integration of automated interpretation into Illumina's TruSight Software Suite for rare genetic diseases. Emedgene's Clinical Rare Disease application is one of a portfolio of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered applications for high-throughput genomic interpretation across clinical and research use cases.

    Dec 16, 2020

  • iGenomics: Free Genome Analysis For The iPhone

    Bio-IT World | Sequencing in the palm of your hand is now a reality. A team of researchers has created iGenomics—the first comprehensive mobile genome analysis application, with capabilities to align reads, call variants, and visualize the results entirely on an iOS device. What started as a high school student’s internship project is now freely available in the App Store.

    Dec 15, 2020