Bio-IT World | First Base | I received an email alert over the weekend with the following title: "Kevin Davies Reflects on Emotional Goodbye." The story was about a professional soccer player in the UK leaving the club he had captained and served for ten years. Coincidentally, I'm also doing a spot of reflection, for this is my last First Base editor's column for Bio-IT World.
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Bio-IT World | Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) research is getting a major boost from a newly launched Pooled Resource Open-access ALS Clinical Trials (PRO-ACT) platform, which has amassed more than 8,500 de-identified clinical patient records into a single, harmonized dataset. Multiple pharmaceutical companies are now actively exploring PRO-ACT, seeking ways to streamline clinical trials and develop better treatments for the rare and highly heterogeneous disease more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
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Biostatistician-Database Manager (6-Month Contract Position)
Scientific Operations
Accelerated Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis
Waltham, MA
This 6-month duration position is responsible for providing biostatistical and data management support for a range of data mining and disease modeling research pr
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NGS Leaders |It’s been over 15 years since Gattaca took genetics to the big screen and pushed the boundaries of the public’s imagination. But where is genomic science reflected in Hollywood today? Author and director Brett Bonowicz hopes to answer that with ThePerfect46, a film that explores where genetics and social networks overlap.
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Bio-IT World | Seventeen million babies are born each year in China. Yet in 2010, the country only had the capacity to offer 150,000 amniocenteses a year. As the most populous country in the world with a well-established one child policy, that number is astonishingly low. And it represents a ripe market for the next generation of prenatal testing. Now Berry Genomics, co-founded by Daixing Zhou, is hoping to capitalize on the market in China.
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Bio-IT World | Transporting big data is a big problem, but an LA-based start-up called BitSpeed believes its software tools, based on TCP (transmission control protocol), can provide a viable and cost-effective solution for life sciences organizations.
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Bio-IT World Guest Commentary | What happens when, during the course of whole-genome sequencing (WGS) a patient or research subject, an investigator sequences and analyzes a disease gene that has been patented? The U.S. Supreme Court will shed some light on this question next year when it issues its ruling in the long-running Myriad Genetics saga.
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Bio-IT World | BOSTON—Receiving the 2012 Leadership in Personalized Medicine Award from the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC), Randy Scott reflected on his success as the founder and former CEO of Genomic Health, but also looked ahead to new opportunities with his latest venture, InVitae Corporation.
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Bio-IT World | The Broad Institute and Appistry announced an arrangement this morning for Appistry to distribute and support the Broad’s Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK) for next-generation sequencing data analysis. For a subscription fee, Appistry will distribute the GATK and its suite of analysis tools to for-profit users and provide commercial-grade customer support.
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Bio-IT World | As biotech catchphrases go, “personalized proteomics” hasn’t quite registered as much as some, but according to Swiss biotech company Biognosys, recent advances in mass spectrometry and bioinformatics could have enormous ramifications for biomedical research, drug discovery, and even consumer health.
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Bio-IT World | Using two new algorithms and Illumina’s newest sequencer, doctors at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, have used whole genome sequencing to rapidly diagnose genetic diseases in acutely ill newborns. The results were published today in Science Translational Medicine.
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Bio-IT World | Limitations on the use of observational data in comparative effectiveness research (CER) were among the themes of a Post-Approval Summit held in early May at Harvard Medical School*. The march toward bigger and often mandatory post-approval studies needs to be rooted in “strong science,” enabled by industry partnerships with large health care delivery organizations, insurers, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and academia, according to keynote speaker Michael Rosenblatt, executive vice president and chief medical officer at Merck.
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Reuters | Columbia University filed suit against Illumina yesterday for allegedly infringing on five DNA sequencing patents. The patents were assigned between 2009 and 2012 and list several inventors.
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Bio-IT World | In the heated field of genomics and proteomics informatics providers, new Integromics CEO Michael McManus has his work cut out to grow the business in a much more inclement economic climate than the one he experiences on his frequent visits to company headquarters in Madrid.
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Bio-IT World | Of all the life science software that has sprung up in the past ten years or so, electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) are the only platforms that have emerged as strategic players across the market. That’s the opinion of Michael Stapleton, General Manager, Informatics at PerkinElmer, who estimates the market penetration is still only 30% to 40%—leaving massive growth opportunities for companies including Sapio Sciences, Agilent, Rescentris, Accelrys and IDBS in the space.
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Bio-IT World | This summer, Foundation Medicine will launch what could be described as the next generation of cancer diagnostics. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company, founded by a premier group of cancer researchers and funded by Third Rock Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures, will launch a comprehensive next-gen sequencing (NGS) profile screening some about 200 genes known to be clinically relevant and actionable in cancer using routine, formalin-fixed paraffin embedded patient cancer specimens.
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Bio-IT World | In a triumph for cystic fibrosis research, Vertex Pharmaceuticals has received FDA approval for Kalydeco (ivacaftor, VX-770), a drug that treats a subset of CF patients, raising a debate on the future of personalized medicine and the treatment of rare diseases.
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Bio-IT World | The Accelrys next-generation informatics suite consists of updated existing products and components, but perhaps most noteworthy is the marriage with a cloud-based product called HEOS, in partnership with Scynexis, for externalizing research.
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