• University of Oxford Launches Top GPU-Based Supercomputer

    Jul 5, 2012, 11:55 AM by Michael Croft
    TechWeek Europe | A consortium of UK academic institutions, led by the University of Oxford, has launched “Emerald” – the most powerful GPU-accelerated computer in the UK.
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  • DNA Mapping of Alzheimer’s Patients Gives Deep Dive View

    Jul 5, 2012, 10:30 AM by Michael Croft
    Bloomberg | Working with $2 million in new grants from the Alzheimer's Association and the Brin Wojcicki Foundation, researchers at the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative will start sequencing the DNA of 800 participants in a study attempting to find the root causes of memory loss. 
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  • How Darwin Can Fight Cancer

    Jul 5, 2012, 08:35 AM by Michael Croft
    Daily Telegraph | A new paper in Nature co-authored by Johns Hopkins molecular oncologist Bert Vogelstein and Harvard evolutionary expert Martin Nowak suggests a way to use the mathematics of evolution to predict the spread of cancer, and thereby treat it far more effectively.
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  • Tegal Shifts to Health Tech with CollabRx Acquisition

    Jul 3, 2012, 10:00 AM by Michael Croft
    North Bay Business Journal | Former semiconductor production equipment maker Tegal Corp. is transforming itself into a healthcare technology company with the deal to acquire gene-based cancer care information provider CollabRx and combine the two companies as CollabRx in San Francisco.
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  • Harvard's Boguski Rides Genomics' Third Wave

    Jul 3, 2012, 09:45 AM by Michael Croft
    GEN | A new health services business, Genome Health Solutions, co-founded by pathologist Mark Boguski and Richard Kellner, is looking to catch the emerging third wave in the clinical application of genomics by marrying knowledge of the clinical and technology market space.
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  • The Return of Finished Genomes: Hybrid Sequencing Strategy Boosts Pacific Biosciences Accuracy, Assembly

    Jul 2, 2012, 09:35 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Two new papers in Nature Biotechnology – one from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the other from Pacific Biosciences – demonstrate the value of combining long but relatively error-prone reads from a “3rd-generation” single-molecule instrument with the high-throughput, shorter “2nd-generation” read lengths from Illumina, marking a potential breakthrough in the quest for "finished genomes."  
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  • Bristol’s $5.3 Billion Amylin Deal Heralds Acquisition Hunger

    Jul 2, 2012, 08:55 AM by Michael Croft
    Bloomberg |  Bristol-Myers Squibb's $5.3 billion deal to buy diabetes drugmaker Amylin Pharmaceuticals is the largest for the pharmacuetical industry industry this year, and comes after the firm's top-selling drug, the blood- thinner Plavix, faced generic competition for the first time in May.
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  • Sophic Releases Cancer Biomarker Database

    Jul 2, 2012, 06:00 AM by Michael Croft

    Bio-IT World | Funded by a 3-year-SBIR grant from the NCI, Sophic has released a cancer biomarker database called SCan-Mark Explorer, focused on breast, ovarian, colon, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and melanoma. 

     

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  • Wellcome Trust Gets Tough With Grantees Who Spurn Open Access

    Jun 29, 2012, 12:55 PM by Michael Croft
    The Guardian | The Wellcome Trust, the wealthy British medical charity, says it will withhold researchers' final grant payments -- typically 10% of the total -- if they fail to publish their results in open access scientific journals.
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  • Data Tsunami: BGI Transfers Genomic Data Across Pacific at Nearly 10 Gigabits/Second

    Jun 29, 2012, 11:45 AM by Michael Croft

    Bio-IT World | During an event in Beijing last week,BGI transferred genomic data across the Pacific Ocean to UC Davis at a sustained rate of almost 10 Gigabits per second, speeds that according to Aspera CEO Michelle Munson mark "the fastest file transfers over public WAN at such distances using commodity hardware.”  

     

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  • Lawrence Livermore, IBM Offer Petascale Supercomputer to Industry

    Jun 29, 2012, 10:00 AM by Michael Croft
    HPC Wire | The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has announced that it is teaming up with IBM to form "Deep Computing Solutions," a collaboration that is being folded into LLNL’s new High Performance Computing Innovation Center (HPCIC).
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  • Synthetic Biology's Master Programmers

    Jun 28, 2012, 09:05 AM by Michael Croft
    Technology Review | For more than a decade, synthetic biologists have promised to revolutionize the way we produce fuels, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. It turns out, however, that programming new life forms is not so easy. Now some of these same scientists are turning back to nature for inspiration.
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  • Gates Foundation in Venture Capital Shift

    Jun 27, 2012, 08:20 AM by Michael Croft
    Financial Times | The Gates Foundation plans to take equity stakes in up to a dozen biotech companies this year, signalling a shift towards a “venture capital” approach at the world’s biggest philanthropic organisation.
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  • Qiagen Eyes Clinical NGS Market in Acquiring Intelligent Biosystems

    Jun 26, 2012, 13:30 PM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Intelligent Biosystems (IBS), a privately held next-gen sequencing (NGS) company based in Waltham, Mass., has been acquired by molecular diagnostics company Qiagen, signaling a concerted move to integrate clinical NGS testing into the German company’s diagnostics portfolio. 
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  • Global Governments' Growing Embrace of Big Pharma

    Jun 25, 2012, 09:40 AM by Michael Croft
    Real Clear Markets | Bill Frezza, a.k.a. author of Bio-IT World's "The Skeptical Outsider" column, pens a scathing dispatch from last week's BIO convention in Boston. "Music, food, and drink abounded, served out of booths with carpets so plush you had to watch your footing. Each was copiously staffed with representatives flown in from around the world busy selling ... well, what? To whom? Using whose money? Toward what end?"
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  • Veteran Biotech Investor Kevin Kinsella Talks Genes, Drugs, and Musicals

    Jun 25, 2012, 09:20 AM by Michael Croft
    U-T San Diego | Kevin Kinsella, the veteran San Diego-based biotech investor, is as much about musicals and social networking these days as personalized medicine. "Getting your complete genome sequenced, to find genotypic traits that are going to tell you more about your health? It won’t do us much good, and, frankly, I don’t think people really care.”
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  • DNA of Wellderly May Hold Clues to Complex Disease

    Jun 25, 2012, 08:45 AM by Michael Croft
    SF Gate | Scientists are taking a deep look at the genetics of unusually healthy elderly individuals to see if there's something protecting them from common illnesses such as Alzheimer's, cancer, diabetes and heart disease -- or what Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute, calls "Teflon-coated" genes
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  • The (Genomics) View From the 57th Floor

    Jun 25, 2012, 02:40 AM by Michael Croft
    Gigablog | The editors of the journal GigaScience offer their appraisal of the inaugural Bio-IT World Asia conference, held earlier this month in Singapore. "The meeting's proximity to the Singapore Biopolis ... and its location at the 57-story Marina Bay Sands resort (with its rooftop world's highest infinity pool) were a winning combination in getting an impressive mix of scientists from around the Asia-Pacific and beyond... to attend and present."
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  • Experts Discuss Future of Medicine at Israeli Presidential Symposium

    Jun 22, 2012, 09:35 AM by Michael Croft
    Jerusalem Post | Experts including USC professor and Navigenics co-founder David Agus discussed topics such as the stagnation in drug development and the future of medicine at the Israeli presidential symposium this week.
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  • Cancer, Data and the Fallacy of the $1000 Genome

    Jun 22, 2012, 09:15 AM by Michael Croft
    Forbes.com | In his first "Hacking Healthcare" blog, Jim Golden discusses the central theme of a recent talk by pathologist Mark Boguski. "The time of the $1,000 genome meme is over," he writes. "It served us well for years... but now it is reducing clinical credibility.  It’s time for it to leave the lexicon of healthcare; it has to go." 
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