We would like to thank everyone who entered our 2020 Abstract Competition. It is wonderful to read about the different ways Golden Helix software is being applied around the world. It is our pleasure to announce this year’s winners! First Place: Dr. Robert Hamilton and Priyanka Kugamoorthy – SickKids Yearly Clinical Review of a Patient’s WGS Results Leads to a… Read more »
Golden Helix is in a unique position to provide a secure on-premise analysis solution. This capability is based on two enablers. First, we build our software solutions from scratch and from the ground-up with the assumption that it should run on any operating system and potentially behind firewalls or even without internet access. Second, we provide these solutions on a licensing model based on training and supporting users, not… Read more »
We are incredibly grateful to be recognized as one of the Top 60 Genetics Blogs on the Web by Feedspot. Our team is dedicated to educating our readers on how our solutions can help enable precision medicine, and we are so honored to have received this recognition. On our blog, you will discover posts touching on important topics, like cyber security strategies,… Read more »
There is no shortage of actors in cyberspace who can be a potential threat to an organization. The list ranges from high schoolers who want to put newly acquired skills to the test, employees or partners who have access to the company network, to professional hackers who intend to hold data hostage or plan to resell information. On the highest-end, some state-financed actors extend their… Read more »
As many of our users know, VarSeq comes shipped with various project templates that are designed to give users a baseline workflow to get started with their projects. These templates are tailored for various applications including tumor-normal, trios, cancer and hereditary gene panels, and ACMG Guidelines workflows. The templates contain application-specific annotation sources and algorithms that will automatically load into… Read more »
Data and security breaches are a fact of life. Organizations are aware of the threats and putting their best efforts up to prevent them as much as possible. Industries across the entire spectrum have been exposed in recent years. I will go through a few examples to show how pervasive this issue has become. Target One prominent data breach occurred in… Read more »
2020 has started strong for Golden Helix customers who are engaged in research projects! We are delighted to see so many publications in January citing our products. As always, we are proud to be a part of these scientific discoveries as well as many others, too numerous to mention! With depth impossible to capture in a few words, I encourage… Read more »
Customizing VSClinical ACMG Guidelines Workflow Part 2 In the first part of this series, we covered how VarSeq provides customization of the clinical analysis workflow process. VSClinical’s various customization parameters within the ACMG Guidelines workflow includes the choice of how the internal knowledge base of previous variant interpretations are stored and what considerations go into this choice. In this blog, we… Read more »
Hospitals and testing labs are undergoing a digital transformation like any other business in our time. They deal with personal data in categories with the highest level of security requirements: personal identity and medical records. The architecture chosen to store and analyze this data is critical to provide the best protection against a data breach incident. The liability and institutional… Read more »
When interpreting a variant using the AMP/ASCO guidelines for somatic variant interpretation, clinicians must determine whether the variant can be considered a biomarker that affects clinical care by predicting sensitivity, resistance, or toxicity to a specific therapy. Such a determination requires the investigation of multiple evidence sources, including clinical trials, FDA approved therapies and peer-reviewed studies. Unfortunately, strong evidence linking… Read more »
Clinical labs offer a unique and sophisticated product that is performed repeatedly with high standards of quality. VarSeq was developed to provide labs with the customization required for clinical genetic tests in a repeatable workflow. On top of this, VSClinical offers additional parameters and choices that can be made when designing the test workflow. In this blog series, we will… Read more »
I am delighted to be starting the year with releasing a new eBook, “Cyber Security Strategies for NGS Testing Labs”. The field of Precision Medicine is at the forefront of changing the face of healthcare. It changes how we diagnose patients and provides new treatment options that did not exist just a few years ago. It is data-driven by nature. As a… Read more »
We’re packing our bags and getting ready to head out to San Diego, CA for the International Plant & Animal Genome XXVIII meeting (or PAG 2020). This is the largest ag-genomics meeting in the world, bringing together over 3,000 leading genetic scientists and researchers in plant and animal research, and over 120 exhibits, 140+ workshops, 1000+ posters, and 1700+ abstracts. We… Read more »
Happy New Year! Certainly, I hope you had a relaxing time over the holidays with family and friends as well as a great start into the new year. 2019 was a real landmark year for Golden Helix. Please let me mention a few highlights: We launched VSClinical AMP in June 2019: This product is supporting the clinical variant interpretation based… Read more »
In advance of the Plant & Animal Genome conference in January in San Diego, CA, it made sense to showcase those working in Agrigenomics in the December Customer Success blog post! The published works this month also perfectly illustrate how SVS software can generate valuable GWAS and Genomic Prediction data for the agricultural industry. We look forward to seeing you… Read more »
Genetic testing labs deal with personal data in categories with the highest level of security requirements: personal identity and medical records. Given the liability and risk associated with a breach of this secure information, it is not surprising that many labs and institutes that aggregate genomic data prefer, if not require, on-premise analysis and storage solutions. Golden Helix is in… Read more »
As clinical genetic tests have been adopted as a critical enabler of precision medicine, the number of tests offered by clinical labs and the volume of tested patients has grown by orders of magnitude in the past five years. The Gene Testing Registry, managed by the NIH, documented a rise from 13,000 to 60,000 tests offered in the US market… Read more »
Copy Number Variation (CNV) is a type of structural variation in which sections of the genome are duplicated or deleted. Although CNV events are rare in the human population, constituting approximately 10% of the human genome, they are also associated with being causal mutations for disease phenotypes. Because of this, it is important for clinical and research settings to identify… Read more »
Using the K-Fold Cross-Validation Statistics to Understand the Predictive Power of your Data in SVS In cross-validation, a set of data is divided into two parts, the “training set” and the “validation set”. A model for predicting a phenotype from genotypic data and (usually) some fixed effect parameters is “trained” using the training set—that is, the best value(s) of the… Read more »
The first two blogs in this series covered Sentieon’s somatic variant calling from Tumor with Normal (Part I) and Tumor without Normal (Part II). In addition to providing multiple somatic variant calling processes, users also have access to high-sensitivity scripts and full support for the GRCh38 reference assembly. Without going into excessive detail, this final blog of the series will… Read more »
