PacBio’s latest announcement: The long and short of It
On the first day of American Society of Human Genetics meeting, PacBio rolls out new long and short-read sequencers…music group Maroon 5.
PacBio’s $600M Omniome buyout brings together long & short of DNA sequencing
DNA sequencing company Pacific Biosciences has reached a $600 million agreement to acquire Omniome, a startup with complementary sequencing technology. The cash and stock deal comes about 18 months after antitrust concerns led PacBio and sequencing giant Illumina to terminate their tie-up.
Inside Ochsner Health System’s partnership with Color to offer certain patients gene testing
With more individuals exploring their family tree, it’s reasonable to believe many of them are als intent to get a handle on their potential for various hereditary diseases. With that in mind, Ochsner Health has launched a digital population health pilot program.
Inside Geisinger Health System’s plan to offer DNA sequencing to patients
“Geisinger is prescribing DNA sequencing to patients and putting DNA results in electronic health records and actually creating an action plan to prevent that predisposition from occurring. We are preventing disease from happening,” said Wendy Wilson, a Geisinger spokeswoman.
Ancestry.com joins the healthcare fray with disease-tracking AncestryHealth
Ancestry.com's first offering, AncestryHealth, helps users track their genealogical predisposition to hereditary disease, but the company plans to expand this new health division well beyond family mapping.
Genomics: Our most data-hungry industry?
Genomics will emerge as the leading user of big data, a new PLOS paper projects. It's estimated, after all, that between 100 million and 2 billion human genomes will be sequenced by 2025 - to say nothing of the genomic sequencing used on plants, animals and microbes.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Genomic data mining firm hopes to help personalized medicine become commonplace in 3-5 years
Charles Eldering started developing methods for mining big data back in the late ’90s on a project that characterized consumers based on their purchasing and television viewing habits. Now, a decade and a half later, similar technology is finally coming of age in healthcare. “I think it’s going to be another 18 months or so […]
GenePeeks’ “digital babies” technique aims to steer future moms to safer sperm donors
When couples or hopeful mothers turn to a sperm bank to help them conceive, they’re presented with a slew of choices about their preferences for a potential donor: Brown eyes or blue? What skills are desirable? What is his family medical history? A Cambridge genetic technology firm is looking to add a new dimension of […]
Google-backed DNAnexus gets $15M to be a hub for all that sequencing data
It’s already working with partners like Stanford University, Baylor College of Medicine and Google, but DNAnexus said today it’s restocked with $15 million from investors to keep pushing adoption of its enterprise platform for DNA sequencing data. Claremont Creek Ventures, Google Ventures, TPG Biotech and First Round Capital funded the company’s Series C, which CEO […]
Bioethics Commission: More communication, proactivity needed in dealing with incidental findings
The hullabaloo around 23andMe brought to light one unresolved issue for direct-to-consumer testing companies, and now a federal advisory panel is bringing to light another: dealing with incidental findings. Incidental findings are pieces of information that are happened upon by clinicians, researchers or DTC testing companies during a test or procedure. For example, a child […]
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
Polaris, ARCH Venture Partners put $15M behind launch of deCODE genetics spinoff NextCODE
Sequencing the genome is one thing, but applying the data produced from that process to clinical care is a whole other thing. A new startup called NextCODE Health has launched with $15 million and a license to use the genomics platform of deCODE genetics to develop sequence-based clinical diagnostics. deCODE, a once-bankrupt Icelandic company now […]
Close look at 23andMe founder and what genetic testing means for adoptive parents
What began as an assignment to investigate and profile 23andMe Founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki took a personal turn for one adoptive parent and Fast Company contributor. In this article, a writer using the pseudonym Elizabeth Murphy examines her decision to get a spit-kit for herself and her daughter, a young child she adopted from […]
Wow of the Week: Scientists challenge the idea of the individual genome
For decades, we as a culture have referred to a person’s genome as a singular thing — a set of DNA that exists in each cell and is unique to each person. You are a person and you have one genome. But the New York Times this week brought to light mounting evidence that that’s […]
Wow of the week: Your DNA could be a 3-D work of art already, New Yorkers!
DNA PORTRAIT from TED Blog on Vimeo. Will you one day peer through a gallery window to see a face that resembles yours and realize your hair follicle was the model? Artist Heather Dewey-Haborg collects hair shed in public spaces–maybe from the bathroom sink in a restaurant, the subway, any number of chairs–and turns them […]
Battelle: Human Genome Project’s economic impact has reached nearly $1T in US (infographic)
In an attempt to calculate the ROI for an estimated $14.5 billion the U.S. government pumped into Human Genome Project-related research, Battelle has come up with an astonishing number: $1 trillion. Over the course of the last 24 years, projects related to sequencing the human genome have yielded an economic impact of $965 billion, including […]