Last month our webcast featured the third place winner of our Annual Abstract Challenge, Dr. Raluca Mateescu, and August’s webcast will feature co-winner, Dr. Vivien Sheehan. Dr. Sheehan’s submission last winter surrounded the pharmacogenomics of hydroxyurea in sickle cell anemia, and we are excited to have her present this research for our Golden Helix community next week (August 12th, register… Read more »
Congratulations to all of our customers who have recently published! It’s always a pleasure to see the interesting and useful work conducted in part with the aid of our software, and we hope you enjoy reading about it as well. Bradley Aouzierat of UCSF and colleagues published Association of IFNL3 and IFNL4 polymorphisms with liver-related mortality in a multiracial cohort… Read more »
VarSeq now supports analysis of paired Tumor/Normal samples! Tumor/Normal support has been one of the most common feature requests for VarSeq since it was launched late last year, and we are excited to make this functionality available to all of our VarSeq users in the latest update (version 1.1.4). VarSeq is a powerful platform for annotation and filtering of DNA… Read more »
This last week I had the pleasure of attending the fourth annual Clinical Genome Conference (TCGC) in Japantown, San Francisco and kicking off the conference by teaching a short course on Personal Genomics Variant Analysis and Interpretation. Some highlights of the conference from my perspective: Talking about clinical genomics is no longer a wonder-fest of individual case studies, but a… Read more »
Just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with MedGenome. The news was covered by a number of outlets including: Financial Express Pharmabiz Let me expIain the importance and impact of this announcement. Since Varseq was released, we have received strong interest from testing labs that are leveraging our product to implement cancer diagnostic pipelines. Please feel free to take… Read more »
Today at Golden Helix, we are proud to announce our collaboration with MedGenome through an integration of OncoMD into our VarSeq software. Now VarSeq’s streamlined process of annotating and filtering variants will offer an added dimension. OncoMD is a comprehensive knowledge base of cancer-specific genetic alterations, and by incorporating it into VarSeq, users can access to 2 million plus annotated… Read more »
Regulatory Issues Regulatory bodies such as the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) already have a full plate. In the US, FDA-regulated products account for 20 percent of each dollar spent by American consumers each year. More specifically, the work of the regulatory authorities include the following: Carefully considering benefits and risks when evaluating medical products Staying on top of rapidly advancing scientific innovations… Read more »
The Educational Challenge Precision medicine will fundamentally change how health care is practiced. Of course, we have a long way to go. For most practitioners today, their knowledge of the human genome was established many years ago. However, new therapies and diagnostic methods are pouring in on a daily basis. So, how do we make sure that the current and… Read more »
Several of our customers have published recently, using our SVS and VarSeq software, and we love sharing their work with you. Congrats to all! Sebastian Mucha and Joanne Conington of Scotland’s Rural College along with colleagues collaboratively published Genome-wide association study of footrot in Texel sheep in Genetics Selection Evolution which used GWAS to investigate links between ovine footrot scores and molecular polymorphisms… Read more »
Bioinformatics Pipelines and Systems Infrastructure The genetics industry is undergoing a fundamental shift from a clinical science focus to a bioinformatics focus. Genetic services require a greater level of data analytics sophistication than is required for other laboratory testing. Currently, data generated by new tests overwhelms current information technology systems and human interpretation capabilities. This is one of the reasons… Read more »
Adoption by Patients and Health Care Professionals Precision Medicine leverages the most innovative technology advances in the field of genetics. The concept is “en vouge”! We know that the science will give us increasingly better treatment options. I have covered this in my previous blog post. But does it really matter? Precision medicine only will become a reality if both… Read more »
Tailoring diagnostic and therapeutic strategies Many have called Sir William Osler (1849-1910) the “Father of Modern Medicine”. He was one of the four founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital where he was instrumental in creating the first residency program for the specialty training of physicians. He brought medical students from the classroom to the bedside for clinical training. He shared… Read more »
Reimbursement and Cost – Precision Medicine Part II The promise of Precision Medicine is to leverage highly targeted therapies for the benefit of the patient. By understanding better what makes us unique and leveraging our genetic make up, we hope to improve the outcome for the individual. Now, this blog is focusing on one issue that we collectively have to… Read more »
As VarSeq has been evaluated and chosen by more and more clinical labs, I have come to respect how unique each lab’s analytical use cases are. Different labs may specialize in cancer therapy management, specific hereditary disorders, focused gene panels or whole exomes. Some may expect to spend just minutes validating the analytics and the presence or absence of well-characterized… Read more »
Precision Medicine Initiative On January 30, 2015, the Precision Medicine Initiative was announced by President Obama. Many in our field, researchers and clinicians alike, recognize that such a program would bring additional funding into our space to design, develop and implement new diagnostic tests that are aiding physicians in their practice of precision medicine. Here is what we know. Led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH),… Read more »
Several of our customers have published recently, using the SVS software and I wanted to share their work. Congrats to all! Daria Babushok and colleagues at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published Emergence of Clonal Hematopoiesis in the Majority of Patients with Acquired Aplastic Anemia in the Cancer Genetics Journal which used comparative whole exome sequencing to evaluate clonal hematopoiesis in acquired aplastic… Read more »
It was a great trip down to Florida this year. AGBT 2015 was an exciting event with lots of great presentations. For us in this tightly-knit community it is an excellent networking opportunity to catch up with existing clients and partners, but also to make new connections. Now, it is impossible to reflect on all the great talks. We were… Read more »
This year’s abstract challenge was another great success. We received over 30 submissions and topics ranged from GWAS to RNA Seq to exome sequencing, and the list goes on. With so many excellent submissions this year, we chose 4 winners, with a tie for 3rd place. Dr. Sergey Kornilov Our first place winner is Dr. Sergey Kornilov, a Postdoctoral Associate… Read more »
I spent a very eventful week at the Molecular TriCon in downtown San Francisco, and have been pondering the very clear trends that emerged by attending the clinical and NGS focused talks. Cancer gene panels make sense economically and as “massively parallel” tests to inform therapy, but they are bound to get more complex. Liquid biopsies of circulating tumor DNA… Read more »
TriCon 2015 was well worth the visit to San Francisco. The combination of extensive programming in conjunction with a large exhibition makes it a must-attend event for scientist and professionals in our industry and the conference seems to grow year after year. This year, we paid a lot of attention to the Clinical Sequencing portion of the event. In this track,… Read more »
