• Aspera Speeds Data in Amazon Cloud

    Mar 15, 2012, 04:55 AM by Michael Croft
    March 15, 2012 | SAN DIEGO—The directory of Aspera’s approximately 1,400 clients reads like the Fortune 500 list. These organizations use Aspera’s proprietary software to speed up the transfer of large volumes of data, which is significantly impacted by latency and packet loss. “We’ve solved the fundamental problem of moving big data over public and private networks,” Aspera’s Daniel Kumi, director of sales and business development, told an audience at CHI’s XGen Congress last week. 
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  • Dr. Watson: IBM's Clinical Genomics Platform

    Mar 15, 2012, 03:45 AM by Michael Croft
    Smart Planet | IBM has launched an analytics platform using some of the natural language processing of Watson for use in a health care setting. 
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  • Clinical Genomics for Leukemia Patients

    Mar 15, 2012, 02:35 AM by Michael Croft
    Reuters | Two studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine explore genetic profiling's role in the treatment of AML, acute mylogenous leukemia. 
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  • VCF and the Genome Analysis Toolbox

    Mar 14, 2012, 05:15 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Inside the Box | We tend to take the extraordinary for granted. Roughly ten years ago we saw the first human genome sequence at a cost of roughly $3 billion. Now a person could have their genome sequenced in a few days for a few thousand dollars, turn around, and in a few more days compute how their sequence differs from any public sequence. This analysis might cost you just a few more dollars to rent the server. Let’s consider how one version of the bioinformatic part of this exercise might work.
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  • Broad's Heng Li Wins 2012 Benjamin Franklin Award

    Mar 14, 2012, 03:20 AM by Michael Croft

    Bio-IT World | Heng Li, a research scientist at the Broad Institute, is the winner of the 2012 Benjamin Franklin Award for Open Access in the Life Sciences. Li made essential contributions to the next generation sequencing (NGS) field with tools like SAMtools, BWA, MAQ, TreeSoft and TreeFam.  

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  • Data Rich, but Insight Poor

    Mar 14, 2012, 02:45 AM by Michael Croft
    Huffington Post | After yet another story about genomics’ impending explosion, one editor wonders why a “data rich” environment is lauded as the answer.
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  • Drug Company Helps Shift Treatment Focus

    Mar 14, 2012, 01:35 AM by Michael Croft
    Xconomy | Seattle Genetics’ first product, Adcetris, was approved by FDA in August. The drug targets a receptor in Hodgkin’s disease and anaplastic large cell lymphoma. The drug works, but the target market is small. So Seattle Genetics is launching a study to find other cancers with the same receptor.
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  • Wisconsin Stem Cell Group Wins Cycle Computing $10,000 Challenge

    Mar 13, 2012, 07:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | Victor Ruotti, a computational biologist at the Morgridge Institute for Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, has won the 2012 CycleCloud BigScience Challenge. Ruotti will be awarded $10,000 of computation time on the Amazon cloud—the equivalent of eight hours on a 30,000-core cluster.
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  • Phylo Proves Gamers' Advantage

    Mar 13, 2012, 03:10 AM by Michael Croft
    Nature | Gamers are proving themselves adept and untangling genomic problems once again. Data from the online game Phylo has helped tackle a problem in comparative genomics and was published in PLoS One.
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  • Reflections on Ten Years of Bio-IT

    Mar 12, 2012, 02:10 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | To mark the 10th anniversary of Bio-IT World’s launch in March 2002, we have invited dozens of prominent scientists and bio-IT professionals, many of whom have featured in our pages and our conferences over the years, to reflect on the most transformative changes they have witnessed over the past decade. 
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  • Bayer Drug Approvals and Growth in Asia Pacific

    Mar 9, 2012, 02:20 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | SINGAPORE--Bayer’s focus in Asia Pacific has continued to grow in the last year, with the company experiencing 9.4% growth across Asia in 2011. Singapore, Vietnam, and Pakistan each enjoyed more than 26% growth in 2011, while markets in Malaysia and Indonesia grew by 14% and 13% respectively.
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  • Progress and Problems in Clinical Genomics Sequencing at XGen Congress

    Mar 8, 2012, 05:55 AM by Michael Croft
    Bio-IT World | SAN DIEGO—Two leaders in the clinical application of whole genome sequencing offered further signs of progress in a pair of keynote talks at the 2012 XGen Congress. Rick Wilson, director of The Genome Institute (TGI) at Washington University, St Louis, and Elizabeth Worthey, bioinformatician at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), shared new findings on the sequencing of cancer and pediatric cases. Although encouraging, Worthey in particular expressed some strong cautionary notes that are hampering current efforts in ending diagnostic odysseys. 
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  • Mutation Variability Across Single Tumors

    Mar 8, 2012, 02:25 AM by Michael Croft
    Bloomberg | A study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that mutations in different parts of the same tumor can vary wildly. A single biopsy, then, may not give doctors enough information to identify mutations that should be targeted by drugs. 
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  • Computer-Aided Treatment Plans

    Mar 8, 2012, 00:10 AM by Michael Croft
    Xconomy | MolecularHealth has released a decision-support software platform for oncologists. The platform takes all the information a doctor has--including a patient's entire genome if it's been sequenced--and scans the available data and the medical literature and gives the oncologist a ranked list of treatment options.
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  • Pharma's Missing Innovation

    Mar 7, 2012, 03:45 AM by Michael Croft
    Atlantic | Sanofi CEO said the pharma is reducing its internal research capacity not because it's cheaper (though it is) but to take advantage of the best ideas in science.
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  • Five Reasons Illumina Should Stay Independent

    Mar 6, 2012, 03:00 AM by Michael Croft
    Xconomy | The Illumina-Roche acquisition dance continues and Luke Timmerman says that if the low-ball takeover happens, it would be, "bad for Illumina shareholders, bad for the genetic tools industry, bad for science..."
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  • Generic Drug Debates

    Mar 6, 2012, 00:20 AM by Michael Croft
    Huffington Post | A tenent of Obama's health care plan was cheaper generic drug options, but that's proving easier said than done. Approving biosimilars is a complex and drawn-out process.
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  • CDC Budget Cuts Could Put Agency at Risk

    Mar 5, 2012, 00:30 AM by Michael Croft
    Nature | President Obama's cuts in CDC funding could spell disaster for the agency. The CDC has had its overall budget cut by 20% since 2010. Some of the cuts are meant to be made up by other government spending, but some of those sources' budgets are not yet approved by Congress. 
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  • The Myth of the Low-Hanging Fruit

    Mar 5, 2012, 00:10 AM by Michael Croft
    Forbes | The "low-hanging fruit" that fueled biotech and pharma in the past is a myth, says John LaMattina. R&D isn't emerging from a golden age of discovery; research has always been hard and the blockbusters of yesterday came at the expense of "spectacular failures."
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  • The Statin-Diabetes Link

    Mar 5, 2012, 00:05 AM by Michael Croft
    New York Times | The Food and Drug Administration warned last week that statins could be causing a sharp increase in Type 2 diabetes and contributing to memory loss among users. 
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