• Ra Pharmaceuticals Launches Protein-Like Drugs

    Xconomy | Ra Pharmaceuticals is announcing its technology platform to develop protein-like molecules that it calls Cyclomimetrics. The technology was licensed from Uppsala University in Sweden, and makes large molecules that can be made into pills. 

    May 23, 2012

  • Ring My BEL: Selventa Releases Biological Expression Language

    Bio-IT World | With a recent rebranding and evolving business model, Selventa—the company formerly known as Genstruct—has decided to release a key knowledge engineering asset to the scientific community. 

    May 23, 2012

  • Big Trial Starting for Genentech's Alzheimer's Drug

    New York Times | Genentech's new Alzheimer's drug trial will test the drug on 200 patients with a genetic mutation for early-onset disease (with half receiving placebo) and another 100 family members without the mutation. 

    May 23, 2012

  • Spectra Logic Tape Storage Beefs Up NCSA Blue Waters Supercomputer

    Bio-IT World | The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) has selected T-Finity tape libraries from Boulder, CO-based Spectra Logic to provide hundreds of petabytes of data storage for its upcoming Blue Waters supercomputing system, one of the most powerful supercomputing systems in the world. 

    May 21, 2012

  • Building Electronic Clinical Trials is Grueling and Slow—Recent Survey

    eCliniqua | The tedious process of building an electronic clinical trial is a stubborn bottleneck requiring too much time and too many resources. Those are the topline results of a 2011 survey conducted at two annual meetings—the Drug Information Association (DIA) and the Society for Clinical Data Management (SCDM). Cmed Technology, a UK-based provider of eClinical solutions developed and administered the survey, which resulted in 87 respondents from 55 companies.

    May 21, 2012

  • Human Genome Exhibition Set to Mark Project’s 10th Anniversary

    Bio-IT World | The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., is planning a “high-tech, high-intensity” museum exhibition next year to mark the 10th anniversary of the official completion of the Human Genome Project, with millions of dollars pledged already by the Life Technologies Foundation, the Brin Wojcicki Foundation, and other donors.   

    May 21, 2012

  • California Considers New Genetic Privacy Law

    Scientific American | First there was GINA, now GIPA? The Genetic Information Privacy Act, currently under consideration by California lawmakers, would require an individual's written consent for the collection, analysis, or sharing of any genetic information. 

    May 21, 2012

  • Rare Mutations Mean Less Disease Correlation

    Bloomberg | In a paper released last week in Science, researchers at the University of Washington show that most genetic variations in people are rare and evolutionarily recent. The findings further reinforce the changes being made to how we think about correlating genetic changes with diseases. 

    May 20, 2012

  • Accelrys Buys Cloud Discovery Platform

    Zacks | Accelrys has bought a Cloud-based drug discovery and development platform from SCYNEXIS, completing the contract both companies entered into last year. 

    May 20, 2012

  • Human Genome Sciences Seeks to Fend Off GSK

    New York Times | Human Genome Sciences is still rejecting a bid from GlaxoSmithKline to buy the biotech. Human Genome Sciences' board voted unanimously to reject the GSK offer and adopt a shareholders' rights plan, or poison pill. 

    May 17, 2012

  • Driving Innovation from Within

    2012 Bio-IT World Best Practices Winner | “It’s survival of the fittest,” explains Ulrich Betz, department head of Merck Serono’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Incubator, of Merck’s innospire program, winner of the 2012 Bio-IT World Best Practices award for Knowledge Management. Only the best ideas win. 

    May 17, 2012

  • Pfizer's Lung Cancer Drug Targets ALK Gene

    Wall Street Journal | Pfizer's new lung cancer drug is showing effectiveness against childhood cancers with defects in the ALK gene. 

    May 16, 2012

  • BGI Installs Roche System for Long Reads

    Bio-IT World | BGI has garnered a lot of attention for its sheer sequencing capacity. Now the sequencing center has installed a new Roche GS FLX+ System at its Shenzhen facility to enhance BGI's long read sequencing capabilities and supplement the short read technologies.

    May 16, 2012

  • GSK Buys Proteomics Company

    Fox Business | GlaxoSmithKline has purchased the remaining percentage of Cellzome for about $98 million in cash. 

    May 16, 2012

  • The Goals of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

    Forbes | Last year NIH set up the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences to overcome bottlenecks and accelerate the development of diagnostics and therapeutics. Recently, the Center's mandate has been further expanded. 

    May 16, 2012

  • 454, SoftGenetics Enter Promotion Agreement

    Bio-IT World | 454 Life Sciences and SoftGenetics have entered into a co-promotion agreement designed to provide users of 454 Sequencing Systems the broad range of next-generation sequencing data analysis options provided by SoftGenetics NextGENe software.

    May 15, 2012

  • Pitfalls Aplenty for Observational Research

    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. 

    May 13, 2012

  • Best Practices: Bringing the Trial to the Patient

    2012 Bio-IT World Best Practices Winner | Almost a year ago, Pfizer started recruiting for a different kind of clinical trial: the first ever conducted under a Participatory Patient-Centered (PPC) model. Last month, the team’s efforts—still very much ongoing—were rewarded with a Bio-IT World Best Practices Award in the Clinical and Health IT category. 

    May 10, 2012

  • Drug Timing Affects Efficacy

    MIT News | Researchers at MIT and Dana Farber have shown that staggering cancer drugs produces better results--in very specific ways. The results were published in Cell today. 

    May 10, 2012

  • More Thoughts on Sequence Analysis

    Xconomy | We are generally agreed that the analysis side of the next generation sequencing coin is becoming the toughest. Even if you get your sequence in a day, then you have to process it.

    May 9, 2012