• Bryn Roberts: Reflections on Pharma’s Scientific Computing Journey

    Bio-IT World | Pharma has had a long history with data. Of course, it wasn’t always digital but there’s always been a data trail. We asked Bryn Roberts from Roche for insights gleaned from his nearly three decades in the pharma industry, mainly in roles related to data science, information technology, and automation. Generating and collecting data has never really been a problem, he said. Managing it, however, has always been a challenge.

    Nov 10, 2020

  • Synthetic Nanobody Potential Treatment, Red Marrow Main Target, Europe Source Of Spread: COVID-19 Updates

    Bio-IT World I Isolated cannabis compounds decrease cytokines, spike protein disrupts blood-brain barrier, aprotinin potential treatment, D614F mutation made virus more contagious, seven forms of disease identified, and new nanoparticle vaccine a promising candidate. Plus: Cornea of the eye may be resistant, propranolol reduces inflammation, autoimmune antibody culprit for blood clots, and lung damage found in ‘long COVID’.

    Nov 6, 2020

  • Setting Your Group Up For Data Governance Success

    Bio-IT World | Data governance is a somewhat fluid term, encompassing all aspects of making sure our data are accurate, consistent, current, and secure. Successful data governance relies on input from scientists, IT teams, and executives, and it must remain flexible as stakeholders change, business interests evolve, and collaborations mature.

    Nov 5, 2020

  • Real Progress In Crowdsourcing Scientific Tasks To Gamers

    Bio-IT World | Gaming and science—two seemingly incompatible areas of activity—have come together nicely in the case of citizen science games such as Foldit, Phylo, and Borderlands Science, as reported by academics close to the action who presented at the recent Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Virtual. The games are all played online, involve analyzing large sets of data, and endeavoring to solve real scientific problems. And players get credit individually (when willing) or as a crowd when findings appear in scholarly, peer-reviewed publications.

    Nov 4, 2020

  • Mini-Lungs In A Dish, Airway Stem Cells, Evolution of Virus Mutations: COVID-19 Updates

    Bio-IT World I Neutrons chart atomic map of COVID-19’s viral replication, Organs-on-Chips technology, coronaviruses mimic proteins that control blood coagulation and inflammation, therapeutic effects of Chinese herbal medicine, crystal structure identified on SARS-CoV-2 papain-like protease, and potent antibody isolated. Plus: NIH researchers discover key pathway in lysosomes for coronaviruses exit, deep learning models to target SARS-CoV-2 main protease, RBD nanoparticles may be effective vaccine, predicting outbreaks, virus may ‘hide’ in asymptomatic people, and NYC outbreak linked to Europe.

    Oct 30, 2020

  • Follow the Money: Microbiome, ‘Omics, Vaccine Patches

    Bio-IT World | Money for oral microbiome drugs, ‘omics, a biology plus technology transistor, digital biomarker platform, a vaccine patch that doesn’t require refrigeration, and more.

    Oct 28, 2020

  • Illumina Launches DRAGEN V3.7, Talks ML, Truth Challenges, All Of Us

    Bio-IT World | Illumina is launching version 3.7 of its DRAGEN bio-IT platform this week, Rami Mehio, Vice President, Bioinformatics and Instrument Software at Illumina, told Bio-IT World last week. The newest release will include DRAGEN for Single Cell RNA, unique molecular identifier (UMI) support including UMI-aware small variant calling, CYP2D6 genotyping, and accuracy gains in both germline variant calling and tumor-only analysis.

    Oct 27, 2020

  • Clinical Data Visualizations at BMS Merge Trial and Real-World Data

    Bio-IT World | The probability of success is low in early drug discovery and gets progressively more expensive on the journey to marketing approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). To “fail early and fail often” has thus become the mantra of medicine developers needing to direct resources to the candidates most likely to triumph, says Philip Ross, director of translational bioinformatics data science at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS). Only 9.6% of drugs that make it to phase I trials ever get FDA approved.

    Oct 26, 2020

  • ‘High-Risk, High-Reward’ Approach To Finding Alzheimer’s Disease Treatments

    Bio-IT World The quest to find new medicines for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) may finally make some headway, thanks to a Target Enablement to Accelerate Therapy Development for Alzheimer’s Disease (TREAT-AD) project that is taking a “high-risk, high-reward” approach to diversifying the drug development pipeline, according to Lara Mangravite, president of Sage Bionetworks. The Seattle-based nonprofit is partnered with Emory University and the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) on the initiative.

    Oct 19, 2020

  • FOXP3 Protein Inhibited, Blocking Factor D Protein May Prevent Inflammatory Response, App Crowdsources Drug Candidates: COVID-19 Updates

    Bio-IT World I Cloud-based tool, IDseq, allows tracking of emerging pathogens, scientist who discovered SARS captures detailed look of immune system response to COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 may become endemic, ORF3B identified as viral factor that impairs immune response, age is an independent factor to virus susceptibility, group of 80 researchers warns against herd immunity approach, high dose favipiravir had significant effect on preventing and treating virus in hamster model, REGN-COV2 antibody ‘cocktail’ offers protection in pre-clinical trial on macaques. Plus: SARS-CoV antibodies effectively neutralize SARS-CoV-2 infection in cultured cells, international open access database aims to reduce duplication of ongoing COVID-19 research and more.

    Oct 15, 2020

  • Proving The Value Of Preventive Genomics

    Bio-IT World | The Bio-IT World Conference & Expo closed out with a plenary keynote presentation on preventive genomics by Robert Green, M.D., professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a physician-scientist who directs the G2P Research Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Broad Institute. Data-sharing difficulties were a recurring theme at this year’s conference but, as the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative has demonstrated, it is possible to combine genomic data to rapidly explore markers of disease, he says.

    Oct 14, 2020

  • Researcher-Driven Data Stewardship, Storage: Trends from the Trenches 2020

    Bio-IT World  | On its 10th anniversary, the annual Trends from the Trenches presentation from Chris Dagdigian, co-founder and principle consultant of BioTeam, and friends had lost none of its characteristic candor and punch—even in a virtual environment and even as Dagdigian successfully continued to limit his own speaking time.

    Oct 13, 2020

  • The Great Data Science Promise For COVID-19, Opioid Addiction

    Bio-IT World | The Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Virtual launched last week with an opening plenary keynote from Drs. Susan Gregurick, Associate Director for Data Science at NIH and Rebecca Baker, Director of the HEAL Initiative at NIH.

    Oct 11, 2020

  • Novel T Cell Subset, Nitric Oxide Effective Treatment Option, SoCal cases linked to New York: COVID-19 Updates

    Bio-IT World | MIT’s preprint reviewers debunk synthetic SARS-CoV-2 paper, genetic analysis of virus samples show most COVID-19 cases in Southern California early in the pandemic are linked to New York state via Europe, not directly from China, vaccines should not be affected by the dominant ‘G-strain’, severe cases of COVID-19 develop a novel T cell subset that can potentially kill B cells, and MS drug inhibits virus growth. Plus, NIH funds COVID-10 vaccine using bovine adenovirus.

    Oct 8, 2020

  • Bio-IT World Virtual: Gamifying Discovery, Human-in-the-Loop AI, New Data Commons Model

    Bio-IT World  Day two of the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Virtual was highlighted by a plenary keynote on artificial intelligence (AI) and citizen science, a new data commons maturity model, guidance for FAIRifying data, augmented intelligence systems for biological data, and much more. 

    Oct 7, 2020

  • Bio-IT World Virtual: First Plenary, AI Workshops, Globus For Data Transfer

    Bio-IT World  The Bio-IT World Conference & Expo Virtual launched today with an open plenary keynote from Drs. Susan Gregurick, Associate Director for Data Science at NIH and Rebecca Baker, Director of the HEAL Initiative at NIH. The rest of the day was full of workshops covering AI in clinical trials and drug discovery, tools for moving data quickly and safely, wearables to gather data, and much more.

    Oct 6, 2020

  • 10x Genomics Announces Two In Situ Sequencing Acquisitions

    Bio-IT World  10x Genomics today announced its second in situ sequencing acquisition: Boston-based ReadCoor, Inc. for cash and stock consideration of $350 million. In late August, 10x Genomics’ acquired Stockholm-based Cartana, developers of in situ RNA analysis technology.

    Oct 5, 2020

  • Culprit Mutations, Risky (Neandertal) Variants, Genomic Analysis App: COVID-19 Updates

    Bio-IT World | Genetic variations not driving outcomes, bio-sensing viral translation, pursuit of a passive vaccine, an Android app that analyzes the SARS-CoV-2 genome, potential antibody cocktails, targeting the hairpin, spike protein may be superantigen, implicating MAIT cells, three mutations common to COVID cases in the U.S., naturally occurring lipid and enzyme hold promise, research using breathing human lungs cells, widespread preexisting immunity, and a Neandertal gene variant that triples the risk of severe disease. Plus, an interactive exhibition about COVID-19 and an international team of experts will study how viral diseases "spill over" from animals to humans.

    Oct 2, 2020

  • A Computational Approach to Modeling COVID-19

    Bio-IT World | In months since March, the biotech community has rallied to identify how our unique perspectives and skills can help with the COVID-19 pandemic. The computational biologists at QuartzBio were no different. Although the research team wasn’t generating their own COVID-19 data, the collaborative culture was generating and sharing raw data to play with, so the QuartzBio team began building models.  

    Oct 2, 2020

  • GA4GH Announces Strategic Roadmap, Connection Demos

    Bio-IT World The Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH) has announced the release of its 2020-2021 Strategic Roadmap yesterday at the virtual GA4GH 8th Plenary Meeting, and released three 2020 Connection Demos to illustrate the deployments of GA4GH standards.

    Sep 30, 2020