BioIT Top Headlines

Ring My BEL: Selventa Releases Biological Expression Language

5/23/2012 6:57:36 PM

Bio-IT World | With a recent rebranding and evolving business model, Selventa—the company formerly known as Genstruct—has decided to release a key knowledge engineering asset to the scientific community.

Big Trial Starting for Genentech's Alzheimer's Drug

5/23/2012 4:41:54 AM

New York Times | Genentech's new Alzheimer's drug trial will test the drug on 200 patients with a genetic mutation for early-onset disease (with half receiving placebo) and another 100 family members without the mutation.

Spectra Logic Tape Storage Beefs Up NCSA Blue Waters Supercomputer

5/22/2012 6:30:34 AM

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.

Building Electronic Clinical Trials is Grueling and Slow—Recent Survey

5/22/2012 6:31:39 AM

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.

Human Genome Exhibition Set to Mark Project’s 10th Anniversary

5/21/2012 12:41:33 PM

Bio-IT World | The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., is planning a “high-tech, high-intensity” museum exhibition next year to mark the 10^th 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.

California Considers New Genetic Privacy Law

5/21/2012 4:46:56 AM

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.

Accelrys Buys Cloud Discovery Platform

5/21/2012 12:19:01 AM

Zacks | Accelrys has bought a Cloud-based drug discovery and development platform from SCYNEXIS, completing the contract both companies entered into last year.

Rare Mutations Mean Less Disease Correlation

5/21/2012 12:28:20 AM

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.

Human Genome Sciences Seeks to Fend Off GSK

5/18/2012 2:27:10 AM

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.

Driving Innovation from Within

5/17/2012 4:21:20 AM

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.

Pfizer's Lung Cancer Drug Targets ALK Gene

5/17/2012 2:59:45 AM

Wall Street Journal | Pfizer's new lung cancer drug is showing effectiveness against childhood cancers with defects in the ALK gene.

BGI Installs Roche System for Long Reads

5/17/2012 3:01:42 AM

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.

GSK Buys Proteomics Company

5/16/2012 3:07:43 AM

Fox Business | GlaxoSmithKline has purchased the remaining percentage of Cellzome for about $98 million in cash.

The Goals of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences

5/16/2012 3:02:11 AM

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.

454, SoftGenetics Enter Promotion Agreement

5/15/2012 4:08:43 AM

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.