BioIT Top Headlines

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.

Pitfalls Aplenty for Observational Research

5/14/2012 8:59:49 AM

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.

Best Practices: Bringing the Trial to the Patient

5/11/2012 5:15:49 AM

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.

Drug Timing Affects Efficacy

5/11/2012 1:30:04 AM

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.

More Thoughts on Sequence Analysis

5/10/2012 2:50:53 AM

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.

GSK Launches Hostile Takeover Bid for Human Genome Sciences

5/10/2012 2:40:00 AM

Baltimore Sun | GlaxoSmithKline has launched a hostile takeover bid for long-time partner Human Genome Sciences worth $2.6 billion, or $13/share.

Manolis Kellis, Epigenetics, and the Future of Fighting Disease

5/9/2012 7:53:11 AM

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.

Introducing the Bina Box

5/8/2012 5:40:41 AM

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.

Editors' Asian Favorites

5/8/2012 12:48:38 AM

Bio-IT World | Bio-IT World has invited a group of superb world-renowned speakers from across Asia, Europe, and North America for its very first conference in Asia (Marina Bay Sands, Singapore; June 6-8, 2012). They will present the latest advances in research and technology in areas such as next-gen sequencing, personalized medicine, high-performance and cloud computing, bioinformatics, drug discovery and development, and translational research. Read on for some of the editor's favorites.

The Merits of Data Sharing in Tackling Rare Diseases

5/9/2012 6:36:08 AM

Bio-IT World | BOSTON—Alex Sherman, director of systems in neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) presented promising new initiatives in the battle against rare diseases at the Bio-IT World Conference. Sherman proposed a model for dealing with the many obstacles that confront research on rare diseases.