• Spectra Logic Tape Storage Beefs Up NCSA Blue Waters Supercomputer

    May 22, 2012, 06:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • Building Electronic Clinical Trials is Grueling and Slow—Recent Survey

    May 22, 2012, 01:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • Human Genome Exhibition Set to Mark Project’s 10th Anniversary

    May 21, 2012, 12:40 PM by Michael Croft
    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.   
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  • California Considers New Genetic Privacy Law

    May 21, 2012, 04:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • Accelrys Buys Cloud Discovery Platform

    May 21, 2012, 00:05 AM by Michael Croft
    Zacks | Accelrys has bought a Cloud-based drug discovery and development platform from SCYNEXIS, completing the contract both companies entered into last year. 
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  • Rare Mutations Mean Less Disease Correlation

    May 21, 2012, 00:05 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • Human Genome Sciences Seeks to Fend Off GSK

    May 18, 2012, 01:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • Driving Innovation from Within

    May 17, 2012, 03:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • Pfizer's Lung Cancer Drug Targets ALK Gene

    May 17, 2012, 02:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Wall Street Journal | Pfizer's new lung cancer drug is showing effectiveness against childhood cancers with defects in the ALK gene. 
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  • BGI Installs Roche System for Long Reads

    May 16, 2012, 03:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • GSK Buys Proteomics Company

    May 16, 2012, 02:05 AM by Michael Croft
    Fox Business | GlaxoSmithKline has purchased the remaining percentage of Cellzome for about $98 million in cash. 
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  • The Goals of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

    May 16, 2012, 02:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • 454, SoftGenetics Enter Promotion Agreement

    May 15, 2012, 04:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • Pitfalls Aplenty for Observational Research

    May 14, 2012, 01:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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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  • Best Practices: Bringing the Trial to the Patient

    May 11, 2012, 01:15 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • Drug Timing Affects Efficacy

    May 11, 2012, 01:00 AM by Michael Croft
    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. 
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  • More Thoughts on Sequence Analysis

    May 10, 2012, 02:05 AM by Michael Croft
    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.
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  • GSK Launches Hostile Takeover Bid for Human Genome Sciences

    May 10, 2012, 02:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Baltimore Sun | GlaxoSmithKline has launched a hostile takeover bid for long-time partner Human Genome Sciences worth $2.6 billion, or $13/share. 
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  • Manolis Kellis, Epigenetics, and the Future of Fighting Disease

    May 9, 2012, 04:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | BOSTON—Manolis Kellis, professor of computer science at MIT, addressed the Bio-IT World Conference on efforts to revolutionize the study of human disease by bridging the gap between genetics and epigenetics. 
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  • Introducing the Bina Box

    May 8, 2012, 03:30 AM by Michael Croft
    Technology Review | Bina Technologies is throwing its hat into the genome analysis ring with an in-house analyzer that can upload the resulting genetic profiles to the company's cloud-hosted site for data management, sharing, and aggregation. 
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