• BARDA Awards Contract to DNAe to Develop Semiconductor DNA Sequencing Platform

    Bio-IT World Brief | DNAe announced that BARDA has awarded the company a contract worth up to $51.9 million to develop its sequencing platform for rapid diagnosis in two key applications; antimicrobial resistant infections and influenza.

    Oct 3, 2016

  • Oxford Nanopore’s Plans for Pre-Packaged Cas9 Test Kits

    Bio-IT World | Oxford Nanopore Technologies is seeing more of a demand to focus on a subset of input materials, Clive Brown said this morning in his technical update. In addition to new pores, new chemistries, and updates on various devices, Brown dove into a Cas9 application that the company has been exploring and intimated that Oxford Nanopore will soon begin selling specific test kits for its mobile sequencers.

    Sep 29, 2016

  • Oxford Nanopore Announces New Pores, Kits and Updates on Projects

    Bio-IT World | The Chief Technology Officer at Oxford Nanopore gave a technical Oxford Nanopore update this morning, outlining updates on MinION, PromethION, SmidgeION, hardware and chemistries. 

    Sep 29, 2016

  • Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Rubicon Genomics, Bioz and more: News from September 2016

    Bio-IT World News Briefs | News, products, and partnerships from around the bio-IT community including news from Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Rubicon Genomics, Bioz, and more.

    Sep 29, 2016

  • Despite the Hype Over Gene Therapy Few Drugs Are Close to Approval

    MIT Technology Review | There are hundreds of early clinical trials, but only a handful of late-stage ones have reached completion.

    Sep 29, 2016

  • Why Big Pharma Wants To Collect 2 Million Genomes

    Nature News & Comment | For the head of AstraZeneca's genomics initiative, the challenge is not just getting the sequences, but in putting them to use - wisely.

    Sep 28, 2016

  • Microsoft Goes All in for FPGAs to Build Out AI Cloud

    TOP500 Supercomputer Sites | Microsoft has revealed that Altera FPGAs have been installed across every Azure cloud server, creating what the company is calling "the world's first AI supercomputer."

    Sep 28, 2016

  • Addressing Common Roadblocks In Drug Development: Keynotes At 2016 Discovery On Target

    Bio-IT World | There is tremendous unlocked potential for new therapeutic drugs. Some of the key aspects of drug development were addressed with novel solutions in compelling plenary keynote talks at the 2016 Discovery on Target Conference in Boston last week.

    Sep 28, 2016

  • Color Genomics Raises $45 Million To Expand Genetic Testing

    Bloomberg | Color Genomics Inc., the three-year-old startup aiming to democratize genetic testing, sealed $45 million in funding as it seeks to make its tests for cancer more affordable and accessible, the company announced Tuesday.

    Sep 27, 2016

  • Kite Unveils Anticipated CAR-T Cancer Data Positive But Not Complete

    Xconomy | Kite Pharma has dipped into a highly anticipated clinical trial of its cancer treatment, KTE-C19, to release a partial set of data. Although not complete, the data bolster the view that Kite could be the first among its peers to win the FDA's green light.

    Sep 27, 2016

  • The Sequencing App and the Quest for Fun

    Bio-IT World | The latest way to get into your genome is a $50 app-based venture that promises to give you a peek into your ancestry and tell you what kinds of bacteria you’re harboring in your mouth. Seeq launched earlier this month offering ultra-low coverage sequencing of the genome, oral microbiome sequencing, and ancestry reports. The goal is an extremely inexpensive infrastructure for people to get a little bit of genomic data and participate in research in a way that’s easy and fun.

    Sep 26, 2016

  • Top Scientists Cautious About Curing Cancer With Immunotherapy

    STAT | There's been a lot of excitement about immunotherapy as a tool to treat cancer. But top experts on Sunday struck an unexpected note of caution.

    Sep 26, 2016

  • New Genomics Pipeline Combines AWS, Local HPC, and Supercomputing

    HPCwire | Declining DNA sequencing costs and the rush to do whole genome sequencing (WGS) of large cohort populations presents an infrastructure challenge that some researchers are solving with a hybrid approach.

    Sep 23, 2016

  • When “Actionable” Genomic Sequencing Results Cannot Be Acted Upon

    JAMA Oncology | Brian J. Zikmund-Fisher recounts an interaction he had with a participant involved in genomic sequencing, in which the term “actionable” led to false hope and dashed expectations.

    Sep 23, 2016

  • Gilead Allergan Seen Trailing Intercept In Ongoing NASH Battle

    Investor's Business Daily | Gilead is trailing Intercept in the battle against NASH, Credit Suisse analyst Alethia Young said Thursday, two days after Botox maker Allergan jumped in.

    Sep 23, 2016

  • Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Lays Out Plan For Funding Disease Research

    Bio-IT World | The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative took to Facebook Live yesterday to lay out their plan of funding the Initiative’s first project. The project, a Biohub located in San Francisco, will combine the knowledge of renowned scientists and engineers in the pursuit of curing disease. 

    Sep 22, 2016

  • Monsanto Licenses CRISPR Technology To Modify Crops

    STAT | Agriculture giant Monsanto has licensed CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing technology from the Broad Institute to develop modified seeds.

    Sep 22, 2016

  • Getting Exascale Right, Not First

    TOP500 | The path to exascale computing hasn't been an easy one. It has had to face a daunting set of challenges in energy efficiency, application parallelism, and system reliability, just to name a few. The difficulties in bringing the hardware and software up to this level is considerable, but there is a more fundamental challenge at the heart of exascale: doing the necessary work of building an ecosystem that will last for a decade or more, not just for a handful stunt machines.

    Sep 21, 2016

  • Taking Care Of Our Own: HR In The Age Of Genomics

    Bio-IT World | As far as their employees are concerned, who among these life-science players are putting their money where their mouths are? The search has been on at Bio-IT World for those organizations who are taking the logical step of subsidizing the sequencing their own employees' genomes and the clinical interpretation thereof.

    Sep 21, 2016

  • Approving A Muscular Dystrophy Drug Ignites A Civil War At The FDA

    Forbes | Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration made history, approving a drug to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy that works by targeting the genetic mutation at the root of the disease. The decision was unique for reasons that were not just scientific.

    Sep 20, 2016