Drug Discovery

Big Growth, Innovation in Rare Disease Biotech

9/6/2012 10:49:00 AM

Forbes | Biotech innovation is thriving at Alexion Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on finding treatments that will transform the lives of patients with ultrarare diseases.

BGI Researchers Report More Evidence of RNA Editing

2/13/2012 2:18:58 AM

Bio-IT World | In a study published online in Nature Biotechnology, BGI researchers have reported evidence of extensive RNA editing in human cells. The paper is a follow up study to last May's Science paper that initially reported sequence differences between mRNA and DNA.

Laying the Foundation for Next-Gen Cancer Diagnostics

2/10/2012 3:38:00 AM

Bio-IT World | This summer, Foundation Medicine will launch what could be described as the next generation of cancer diagnostics. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company, founded by a premier group of cancer researchers and funded by Third Rock Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures, will launch a comprehensive next-gen sequencing (NGS) profile screening some about 200 genes known to be clinically relevant and actionable in cancer using routine, formalin-fixed paraffin embedded patient cancer specimens.

Warp Drive Bio Charts Course for Natural Product Drugs

2/8/2012 1:36:50 AM

Bio-IT World | While many major pharma companies have been cutting back their research into natural products, Warp Drive Bio, a new start-up out of Third Rock Ventures in Boston, is dedicated to mining the genome of micro-organisms for potent natural product compounds. And in a striking $125-million deal, Warp Drive has teamed with Sanofi to provide ample funding to get operations off the ground and potentially into orbit.

Remedies for Safer Drugs

1/9/2012 10:40:33 PM

Drug Safety New solutions to seek signals, organize data, train interpreters, expedite reporting, and find better biomarkers. By Deborah Borfitz January 10, 2012 | Pharmacovigilance experts have an abundance

What is (Quantitative) Systems Pharmacology?

1/9/2012 10:46:16 PM

By John Russell January 10, 2012 | The Russell Transcript | Just a few days apart in the middle of October, Harvard Medical School (HMS) announced a broad initiative in systems pharmacology and NIH released a like minded white paper,

The Pharmaceutical Safety Data Problem

1/9/2012 10:42:26 PM

By Ernie Bush January 10, 2012 | Bush Doctrine | I doubt most people fully appreciate the size and scope of the pharmaceutical safety informatics space. I consider myself an avowed information systems advocate with decades of pharma R&D experience,

NuMedii’s New Way to ‘De-Risk’ Drug Repositioning Work

11/15/2011 3:47:50 AM

Stanford University spin off relies on database to identify new drug uses. By Deborah Borfitz November 15, 2011 | A newly minted biotechnology company is offering to match the molecular genomic activity of previously approved medicines to that of known

Recent Sequencing Plans by the Numbers

10/18/2011 4:51:18 AM

Xconomy | What do 10,000 people with autism, 50,000 people in some remote islands in the North Atlantic, and 1,000 healthy old folks in southern California have in common?

New iReport Product Quickly Processes 'Omics Data

9/29/2011 2:29:31 AM

Bio-IT World | Ingenuity Systems has just announced its iReport product for quickly making sense of 'omics data and will offer free, early access to the first 5,000 researchers to sign up by October 31.

Predictive Science Center in Russia

9/27/2011 1:55:54 AM

AstraZeneca to contribute to development of bioinformatics and predictive medicine in Russia. By Eugene Gerden September 27, 2011 | AstraZeneca, the world’s seventh largest pharmaceutical company, has announced its plans to establish a predictive science center for bioinformatics and predictive

Reevaluating the Role of the Research Librarian

9/27/2011 2:48:39 AM

By Rya Ben Shir and Alexander Feng September 27, 2011 | If your image of a research librarian is the soft spoken, bespectacled woman politely shushing you when you’re talking in the library, that outdated perception couldn’t be further from

Powering Preventative Medicine

9/26/2011 10:39:13 PM

DNA Electronics is building the foundations for semiconductor sequencing. By Kevin Davies September 27, 2011 | DNA Electronics certainly sounds like the quintessential bio IT company, but this London firm is quietly making waves in the field of next generation

Big Pharma’s Last Refuge

9/27/2011 1:29:06 AM

By Bill Frezza September 27, 2011 | The Skeptical Outsider | In the previous issue of Bio•IT World (July August 2011), my fellow columnist Ernie Bush posed the question, what are the limits to collaboration among pharmaceutical companies? This same

Stigmergy, Anyone?

9/27/2011 1:21:38 AM

By Ernie Bush September 27, 2011 | The Bush Doctrine | Stigmergy is currently defined in Wikipedia as “A mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action