Mar 21, 2013, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft

Bio-IT World Roundup | Lots of news for AstraZeneca this morning. The company announced plans to cut 2300 sales and administrative jobs and plans to focus on respiratory, inflammation & autoimmunity; cardiovascular & metabolic disease; and oncology. The company also announced a major agreement with Moderna Therapeutics, starting with a $240 million upfront payment for mRNA research.

Mar 21, 2013, 07:00 AM by Michael Croft

Bio-IT World | News briefs for March including updates from Ingenuity, GeneInsight, University of Auckland, and the Research Resonance Network. New products from SoftGenetics, Accelrys, Cynvenio Biosystems, SGI, PerkinElmer and more.

Mar 20, 2013, 15:00 PM by Michael Croft

New York Times | Larry Smarr and his team at UC  San Diego are about to open the “Big Data freeway system” for next-gen data projects including genomic sequencing. The new network--Prism--is based on an optical switch developed by Arista Networks.

Mar 20, 2013, 10:00 AM by Michael Croft

Xconomy | Blueprint Medicines has reunited the team behind Gleevec—Nick Lydon, Brian Druker, and Charles Sawyers. The startup, backed with a $40 million Series A financing from Third Rock Ventures and Fidelity Biosciences in 2011, believes now is the time for more drugs like the cancer blockbuster.

Mar 20, 2013, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft

PBS | On April 15, the Supreme Court will again hear a case against Myriad Genetics' gene patents. Though the legal debate is unlikely to end there, the decision could have implications for personalized medicine. Even the researcher who was originally responsible for the Myriad patent of BRCA2 has changed his tune.“

Mar 19, 2013, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft

Forbes | They were trying to find a better way to make yogurt, but instead, they stumbled across a bacterial immune system and a protein that finds very specific DNA sequences. George Church's lab proved that the protein could make multiple, specific edits to a cell's DNA at once. From here, the possibilities are endless.

Mar 19, 2013, 08:00 AM by Michael Croft

Bio-IT World News Brief | BGI-Shenzhen has completed its acquisition of Complete Genomics through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Beta Acquisition Corporation.

Mar 18, 2013, 14:00 PM by Michael Croft

Technology Review | FindZebra bests Google at the rare disease hunt. The new search engine is dedicated to identifying rare diseases using an index of databases including the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man database and more.

Mar 18, 2013, 13:00 PM by Michael Croft

Bio-IT World | One of the most surprising parts of Atul Butte’s lab website is his open-access calendar. At the bottom of his profile page, Butte, Chief of the Division of Systems Medicine at Stanford University and a keynote speaker for the Bio-IT World Expo on April 10, lists his daily commitments, instructions for making an appointment, and his assistant’s phone number. The message is subtle, but clear: personal data cannot stay personal for long if Big Data will succeed in medicine.

Mar 18, 2013, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft

Bloomberg | AstraZeneca announced that it will cut 1,600 jobs in an overhaul of the company's research and development efforts. The cuts will hopefully save the company $1.4 billion.

Mar 15, 2013, 11:00 AM by Michael Croft

GEN | BGI has successfully completed its tender offer for all outstanding shares of Complete Genomics, the Chinese firm said today.

Mar 15, 2013, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft

News Brief | A judge in Tacoma, Washington, has ordered Illumina to pay $96 million in damages to Syntrix Biosystems for infringing upon its bead array patent.

Mar 15, 2013, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft

UCSF | University of California San Francisco is launching a four-year, $2.4 million project to analyze how physicians and patients in the general population, as well as those given whole genome sequencing results in a clinical trial, evaluate the benefits and risks of genetic information.

Mar 15, 2013, 08:00 AM by Michael Croft

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.

Mar 14, 2013, 09:00 AM by Michael Croft

Washington Post | Apparent suicide and potential scandal are two unsavory elements surrounding a disputed article published by a noted Johns Hopkins research group in Nature six months ago.

Mar 14, 2013, 08:00 AM by Michael Croft

Bio-IT World | Steven Salzberg, computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University, is the winner of the 2013 Benjamin Franklin Award, presented annually by the Bioinformatics Organization. He spoke to Kevin Davies about the highlights of his lab’s research over the past 15 years and his philosophy on open-source and open access.

Mar 13, 2013, 14:00 PM by Michael Croft

Guardian | 23andMe founder, Anne Wojcicki, talks genomics and why everyone should get on board.

Mar 13, 2013, 12:00 PM by Michael Croft

Bio-IT World Roundup | Yesteday afternoon GSK announced that it was closing its Sirtris Pharmaceuticals offices in Cambridge, Mass. Close on the heels of the announcement, rumors swirled about other GSK reorganizations.

Mar 13, 2013, 10:00 AM by Michael Croft

Bio-IT World | Nabsys has closed a $20 million Series D financing to support the commercial launch of the company’s positional sequencing system. The company previewed its pre-beta instrument at AGBT last month, giving early users the chance to see the technology at work.

Mar 13, 2013, 00:00 AM by Michael Croft

Bio-IT World Video | Jack Szostak, Nobel laureate, will be keynoting CHI’s Drug Discovery Chemistry conference in San Diego in April. In this video sneak peak, he and Bio-IT World editor Kevin Davies discuss the role of academics in R&D, the exciting world of macrocyclic peptides, and his plan to one-up evolution.