November News and Product Briefs
News Briefs
Desktop Genetics, a software company supporting CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology, signed a partnership agreement with Transcriptic, a California-based robotic cloud laboratory for life sciences. The partnership will combine DTG’s CRISPR/Cas9 design software with Transcriptic’s services for cloud-based, high-throughput cloning of CRISPR constructs. Transcriptic will conduct automated assembly of CRISPR libraries guided by DTG’s DESKGEN gene-editing platform. Customers will have full control of experimental design parameters through a web interface. (For more on Transcriptic, see “Transcriptic Aims to Make the Biology Lab Programmable.”) Press release
The San Antonio 1000 Cancer Genomes Project (SA1kCGP), WuXi NextCODE, and South Texas Accelerated Research Therapeutics (START) announced a city-wide cancer genomics project. The SA1kCGP brings together hundreds of doctors, oncologists and surgeons, and a thousand patients to create the basis for this resource: tumor samples from breast, lung, prostate, skin, colorectal, uterine, pancreatic, ovarian, stomach, brain cancers, collected at the time of diagnosis. WuXi NextCODE will sequence and interpret the samples. START is connecting this “delta file” to anonymized patient electronic clinical records using the Medidata Rave system, and will make it available to qualified researchers and clinicians via the cloud. (For a similar population genomics effort featuring WuXi NextCODE, see “Sidra Medical Center Deploys NextCODE for Qatar Genome Project.”) Press release
Illumina is teaming up with the Hartwell Autism Research and Technology Initiative (iHART) to further the genomic analysis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). This collaboration is part of iHART’s mission to establish the largest shared, open-access repository of bioinformatic data on autism. iHART will place 5,000 genomes of individuals with autism and their families from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) genetics repository in BaseSpace, Illumina’s cloud-based genomic analysis platform. Press release
Sophia Genetics revealed that its platform, Sophia DDM, now hosts the world’s largest clinical genomics community for molecular diagnosis. After growing by 400% this year, it now supports over 100 institutions across 18 countries, making it the largest network globally for interpreting anonymized genomic data and sharing knowledge on clinical interpretation. The company performed over 20,000 patient analyses in 2015, and expects to quadruple this number in 2016. Press release
FactBio was founded as a developer of bioinformatics software for knowledge management and data sharing. The company will focus on the development of Kusp (Knowledge Sharing Platform), a knowledge management system that will allow researchers to select a series of BioBuckets and use these to track entities of interest to them, and receive updates of new developments. The entities could include genes, pathways, proteins, or even people and publications as required. In addition, FactBio is working with a number of life science companies on a consultancy basis and is running a series of training events for bioinformaticians. Press release
twoXAR raised $3.4 million in seed financing led by Andreessen Horowitz, joined by CLI Ventures and the Stanford-StartX Fund. twoXAR will use these funds to expand its engineering and commercial teams and pursue research on drug candidates for metabolic and neurological diseases. twoXAR uses its DUMA platform to evaluate public and proprietary datasets to identify and rank high probability drug-disease matches. These drug-disease matches can then be used to prioritize existing candidates, perform targeted searches and identify novel drug candidates for further clinical testing. Press release
DZZOM has completed a seed financing totaling $600,000 from undisclosed angel investors. DZZOM is developing a Network Medicine software suite for uncovering the network of protein-protein physical interaction within the human cell. The company has an exclusive license agreement with Northeastern University for two core prediction algorithms. Press release
Station X, Inc., a developer of cloud-based genome management systems, announced that Circulogene Theranostics will use its GenePool platform to analyze and interpret data generated from their cell-free DNA (cfDNA) sequencing-based liquid biopsy services. Circulogene’s technology searches for nearly 3,000 cancer mutations on 50 well-established cancer-associated genes and can provide information on current FDA-approved and NCCN/ASCO-endorsed treatment options for the tumor DNA mutations identified. Press release
New Products
Meta, a machine intelligence and big-data-as-a-service company for researchers and scientific industries, raised $6 million in funding led by Rho Canada Ventures. Meta recently launched its AI-powered science information platform, which allows users to navigate scientific publications. The platform currently offers 20 machine intelligence services for four core scientific industries: publishing, life science tools and reagents companies, academia, and government agencies. Meta also announced an agreement with SRI International to commercialize their predictive intelligence technology originally created under the U.S. Government's $60 million IARPA FUSE project. Press release (PDF)
Dassault Systèmes launched three industry solution experiences for life sciences, focused on biopharma. “ONE Lab” integrates people, resources, processes, data, analysis and documentation so that laboratories can collaborate on researching, developing and testing products. “Made to Cure for BioPharma” uses process and quality data across multiple organizations to reduce process development times and technology transfer costs. “Designed to Cure” uses predictive analytics and virtual design and simulation to model therapeutic candidates. Press release
NanoString Technologies expanded its 3D Biology portfolio with the launch of nCounter PanCancer Profiles, seven new gene expression panels each designed to interrogate a focused area of cancer biology including immuno-oncology. These panels may be combined with nCounter protein expression modules for simultaneous analysis of gene and protein expression. The new panels can be customized with up to 24 additional gene expression targets defined by the user. Press release
Genestack, developer of an enterprise platform for genomics research and development, launched the “Genestack Expert Series,” a selection of video tutorials showing how users can gain the most from the Genestack platform. Videos in the series will feature topics such as differential isoform expression and novel transcript discovery, quality control, single cell sequencing analysis, and DNA methylation analysis. Press release
