• Oxford Nanopore Announces Auto Sample Prep, New Chips, Pay-As-You-Go Pricing

    May 14, 2015, 14:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Clive Brown’s Oxford Nanopore took over our Twitter feed on Thursday afternoon with news coming out of the London Calling event (#nanoporeconf). Many in attendance (and watching the Twitter feed) called the announcements “game-changing” and likened the atmosphere to Apple’s iPhone announcement in 2007. 
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  • Mayo Clinic Embarks on Population-Scale Pharmacogenomics Study

    May 14, 2015, 10:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World News Brief | Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has announced plans to sequence genes from 10,000 patients for genetic variants that could affect their responses to a variety of medications, as part of a study that will track the long-term health outcomes of patients who undergo pharmacogenetic testing.
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  • Genentech Brain Trust Raises $217m For New Startup To Fight Alzheimers And Parkinsons

    May 14, 2015, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Forbes | Three former top researchers at Genentech, the legendary biotech that is now part of Roche Holding, have raised $217 million in venture capital to start a new company, Denali Therapeutics, focused on treating and curing neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS, and Parkinson's.
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  • Allen Institute Debuts Neuron Periodic Table

    May 14, 2015, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Xconomy | With the Allen Cell Types Database, the Allen Institute for Brain Science aims to catalog and classify the types of neurons that fill the brain.
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  • Citizen Science in the Unexplored Terrain of the Brain

    May 13, 2015, 10:25 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | To understand how neural circuits give rise to complex mental phenomena, neuroscientists need detailed maps of brain cells in their natural environment. With an online game called EyeWire, one group of researchers is enlisting thousands of ordinary people to do what the best artificial intelligence cannot: turn huge numbers of electron microscope images of the retina into accurate, three-dimensional models of neurons as they appear in living tissue.
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  • Cleversafe Joins iRODS Consortium

    May 12, 2015, 14:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Cleversafe, a private cloud platform, announced today that it has joined the iRODS Consortium, a membership-based foundation organized to sustain the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System (iRODS) as free open source data management software. 
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  • Genedata Screener Now Supports Streamlined Collaboration among Pharmas and CROs

    May 12, 2015, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft
    BASEL, SWITZERLAND - May 12, 2015 - Genedata, a leading provider of advanced software solutions for drug discovery and life science research, today announced that the Genedata Screener® platform supports data- and result-sharing with Contract Research Organizations (CROs)
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  • Jennifer Doudna a Pioneer Who Helped Simplify Genome Editing

    May 11, 2015, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft
    New York Times | The biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley, helped make a monumental discovery: a relatively simple way to alter any organism's DNA. But she is stuck in a patent fight over it.
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  • Looking Forward to the Clinical Genome Conference

    May 7, 2015, 11:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | CHI’s Clinical Genome Conference (TCGC) always offers a packed schedule of talks at the cutting edge of medical genomics. With a program once again pushing the envelope of where genomics and medicine will take us in the coming year, we aren’t expecting much down time over the three event days, though we always work in at least one trip out of San Francisco’s Japantown for Burmese tea leaf salad. Here’s what else we are looking forward to on the TCGC menu.
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  • PacBio, RainDance to Co-Develop De Novo Whole Genome Assembly Product

    May 6, 2015, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World News Briefs | Pacific Biosciences and RainDance Technologies yesterday announced a co-development and co-marketing agreement to commercialize novel solutions for de novo whole genome assembly.
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  • Apple Pursues DNA Data

    May 6, 2015, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft
    MIT Technology Review | Apple is collaborating with U.S. researchers to launch apps that would offer some iPhone owners the chance to get their DNA tested, many of them for the first time, according to people familiar with the plans. The apps are based on ResearchKit.
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  • IBM Announces Watson Genomic Analytics; Collaborations with 14 Cancer Centers

    May 5, 2015, 16:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | IBM Watson made a series of announcements today at World of Watson, a symposium IBM is hosting in New York. In opening remarks, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty highlighted Watson Genomic Analytics; introduced collaborations with 14 leading cancer centers to use the solution to scale precision oncology; and announced a partnership with Epic to integrate Watson into EHR systems.
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  • iSpecimen® Technology Consolidates the Procurement Process for Human Biospecimens

    May 5, 2015, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft
    LEXINGTON, MA, UNITED STATES - May 5, 2015 - iSpecimen, a trusted source of customized human biospecimen collections, today released its latest technology that connects biomedical researchers to high quality, annotated human biospecimens that would otherwise be discarded by hospitals and labs after clinical testing is complete
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  • Phil Bourne: Open Data Evangelist on NIH Data Plan

    May 4, 2015, 16:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Before we get ahead of ourselves, Philip Bourne, Associate Director of Data Science at NIH, emphasized that in the 6D framework of patient-centered health, we are still mired in “deception”—step two—and haven’t yet reached disruption. Democratization is still far on the horizon.
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  • Leading Gravimetric-based Pharmacy Medication Workflow Solution, BD Cato™, Now Available with Visual Documentation Hardware (VDH) Camera

    May 1, 2015, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft
    FRANKLIN LAKES, NJ - May 1, 2015 - Franklin Lakes, NJ (April 30, 2015) - BD Medical, a segment of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX), a leading global medical technology company, announced today that its BD Cato™ Medication Workflow software product is now available with an optional, camera-based, visual documentation hardware
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  • Amazon Buys ClusterK

    Apr 30, 2015, 13:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World News Brief | Yesterday, Amazon acquired ClusterK, a start up Bio-IT World covered in February for between $20 and $50 million, Venture Beat reported.
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  • WuXi NextCODE, DNAnexus Launch End-to-End Sequencing in China and Beyond

    Apr 30, 2015, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Last week during the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, WuXi NextCODE and DNAnexus announced a strategic alliance to accelerate genomics worldwide.
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  • Industry Experts on Designing Research Platforms to Serve Patient Participants

    Apr 29, 2015, 10:15 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | A keynote panel at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, featuring representatives from PatientsLikeMe, the Empowered Genome Community, and the Open Medicine Institute, addressed ways to make research meaningful for the patient participants who want to share their data and experiences with science.
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  • Illumina Pursues a $20B Market

    Apr 29, 2015, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Forbes | Illumina, one of the most important companies in biomedicine, is still barely known to the public. But scientists, diagnostics makers, physicians, and Wall Street look at the company with a mix of fear and awe. Just as Intel became the company that sparked so much of the computer revolution, Illumina is driving the genomics revolution.
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  • New Projects for Pistoia

    Apr 28, 2015, 14:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Contributed Report | ZURICH--Early arrivals at the Pistoia Alliance Annual European Conference were able to enjoy the local festival of Sächsilüüte whereby a snowman (the Böögg, literally translated as the bogeyman) is packed with fireworks and placed atop a lit bonfire. The less time it takes for its head to explode, the better the summer will be. Although not usually so spectacularly explosive, the life sciences industry is certainly feeling the heat at present as technology develops rapidly and commercial pressures increase. The goal is to avoid a similar fate to that of the unfortunate Böögg.  
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