• Wellcome Trust Introduces Mykrobe Predictor for Genetic Analysis of Antibiotic Resistance

    Dec 23, 2015, 14:30 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | A large team of researchers led by Zamin Iqbal of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics has published a new software tool that rapidly identifies antibiotic-resistant bacteria using DNA data, beginning with studies of Staphylococcus aureus and Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
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  • Foundation Medicine, UnitedHealthcare Sign Lung Cancer Profiling Agreement

    Dec 22, 2015, 17:00 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World News Brief | Foundation Medicine has signed an agreement with UnitedHealthcare to offer FoundationOne, a comprehensive genomic profiling assay for solid tumors, to patients with metastatic stage IV non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
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  • Triumph of the Public Cloud

    Dec 22, 2015, 15:44 PM by Michael Croft
    Wired | A decade after the launch of Amazon Web Services, there has been a seismic shift in attitudes toward the transfer of computing to cloud services.
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  • OrbiMed Launches New VC Fund with $950m

    Dec 21, 2015, 16:00 PM by Michael Croft

    Bio-IT World News Brief | OrbiMed, a leading investment firm focused on the healthcare sector, today announced the closing of its next venture capital fund, OrbiMed Private Investments VI, LP, with $950 million in limited partner commitments.

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  • New Persephone Technology to Be Demonstrated at Genome Conference

    Dec 21, 2015, 12:42 PM by Michael Croft
    THOUSAND OAKS, CA - Dec 21, 2015 - Ceres, Inc. (NASDAQ: CERE), an agricultural biotechnology company, today announced that its genomics team will demonstrate new features of its Persephone software technology at the upcoming International Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, Calif
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  • U.S. Department of Energy Awards $13.5M to Enhance Sorghum for Biofuel

    Dec 21, 2015, 10:40 AM by Michael Croft
    ST. LOUIS, MO, UNITED STATES - Dec 21, 2015 - The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center announced that it will be part of a major collaborative research project to improve sorghum's productivity under resource-limited conditions
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  • GENEWIZ Acquires the Genomic Services Business of Beckman Coulter

    Dec 21, 2015, 10:05 AM by Michael Croft
    SOUTH PLAINFIELD, NJ, UNITED STATES - Dec 21, 2015 - Leading global genomics service provider, GENEWIZ, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the genomic services business of Beckman Coulter, which delivers expert genomics sequencing solutions to healthcare businesses, as well as academic and government institutions worldwide (GS)
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  • Bayer, CRISPR Therapeutics Form $335M+ Gene Editing Venture

    Dec 21, 2015, 09:14 AM by Michael Croft
    Xconomy | Bayer and CRISPR Therapeutics have signed a pact that could be worth more than $335 million to develop CRISPR-based drugs for a variety of diseases starting with blindness, blood disorders, and congenital heart disease.
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  • The Personal Genome Project, Ten Years Later

    Dec 18, 2015, 13:01 PM by Michael Croft
    Techonomy | A decade ago, the Personal Genome Project became the first massive study of people sharing their full genome information. Many thought it unlikely to succeed.
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  • Juniper warns about spy code in firewalls

    Dec 18, 2015, 09:33 AM by Michael Croft
    Computerworld | Juniper, a major manufacturer of networking equipment, said on Thursday it found spying code planted in certain models of its firewalls, an alarming discovery that echoes of state-sponsored tampering.
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  • AMP, FDA Debate Regulation of Laboratory-Developed Tests

    Dec 17, 2015, 13:15 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | The Association of Molecular Pathology (AMP) accused the Food and Drug Administration of fabricating some of the examples included in a recent FDA report outlining the public health evidence for FDA oversight of laboratory-developed tests.
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  • Congress Gives Big Funding Increase to NIH

    Dec 16, 2015, 15:40 PM by Michael Croft
    STAT | The spending bill for the federal government, still pending passage, ends more than 12 years of stagnant budgets for NIH with a $2 billion raise.
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  • Long-Read Sequencing in the Age of Genomic Medicine

    Dec 16, 2015, 13:45 PM by Michael Croft
    Diagnostics World | Long-read sequencing today is mostly a curiosity of basic research, but Roche Diagnostics is now planning to commercialize it for clinical testing with a high-throughput instrument launch in 2016. Robert Sebra, Director of Technology Development at Mount Sinai, tells us where he sees the most promise in using long-read sequencing to diagnose and treat patients.
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  • Sinequa Selected by UCB to Reduce Time and Cost of Searching Clinical Trial Data

    Dec 16, 2015, 13:31 PM by Michael Croft
    NEW YORK, NY - Dec 16, 2015 -  Sinequa, a leader in real-time Big Data search and analytics, today announced that UCB has selected the Sinequa Big Data Search & Analytics Platform to speed vital information discovery of its clinical trial file share
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  • FDA Brings PrecisionFDA Platform Online

    Dec 15, 2015, 10:45 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World News Brief | This morning, the FDA announced the availability of precisionFDA, a platform where developers can upload and access pipelines for the analysis of next-generation sequencing data, comparing results against best-in-class reference standards.
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  • Strategic Partnership Attracts Plant Genomics Expert to Region

    Dec 15, 2015, 10:40 AM by Michael Croft
    ST. LOUIS, MO, UNITED STATES - Dec 15, 2015 - Officials from the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis and the University of Missouri (MU) announced today the joint hiring of Blake Meyers, Ph
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  • Personalized Medicine: A Faustian Bargain?

    Dec 14, 2015, 16:12 PM by Michael Croft
    Scientific American Blog Network | Two specialists in the ethics and policy of biotechnology argue that personalized medicine is in danger of denying state-of-the-art care to the very data donors who make new discoveries possible.
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  • AstraZeneca Joins a $100M Research Effort to Investigate the 'Secretome'

    Dec 11, 2015, 11:29 AM by Michael Croft
    FierceBiotech | AstraZeneca, on the hunt for new drug targets and delivery mechanisms, is teaming up with the Swedish Wallenberg Centre for Protein Research to explore the universe of proteins secreted by human cells.
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  • Computer Science Project Evolves Into New Tool for the Biotech Industry

    Dec 11, 2015, 10:20 AM by Michael Croft
    RALEIGH, NC - Dec 11, 2015 - When Scott Vu started working on a computer science research project as a teenager, he didn’t realize it would lead to his launching a company designed to help the biotechnology industry operate more efficiently
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  • Rubius Snags $25M to Engineer Red Blood Cells Into Drugs

    Dec 10, 2015, 12:07 PM by Michael Croft
    Forbes | Flagship Ventures-funded Rubius Therapeutics wants to insert genes for therapeutic enzymes into blood-forming stem cells, then infuse the nucleus-free mature cells into patients to fight disease.
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