The next release of VarSeq will ship a new product that is highly relevant to our customers in clinical testing labs. Via VSReports, VarSeq now has the ability to generate clinical-grade reports. These reports are fully customizable, containing focused and actionable data. VS Reports ships with report templates that are modeled off of the ACMG guidelines, the de-facto gold standard… Read more »
Precision Medicine e-Book “It’s far more important to know what person the disease has than what disease the person has.” – Hippocrates (460 BC – 370 BC) Almost 2,500 years ago, Hippocrates captured one of the key principles underlying precision medicine. In the 21st century we take the understanding of the individual characteristics of a person to a new level…. Read more »
GWAS became possible about 10 years ago as the result of several scientific advances. Since then, GWAS has continually developed as a primary method for identification of disease susceptibility genes in humans and other organisms. At Golden Helix we are proud of our history in supporting GWAS analysis from its inception. Our software was used to analyze whole-genome data from… Read more »
Recently, Golden Helix, Inc. announced the addition of VSPipeline to our VarSeq software suite. VSPipeline is a command-line interface that will allow high throughput environments the ability to tap the full power of VarSeq’s algorithms and flexible project template system from any command line context, including existing bioinformatics pipeline. So, what is the big deal? Here are the top five… 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 »
Yes, I said it. “Them be fighting words” you may say. Well, it’s worth putting a stake in the ground when you have worked hard to have a claim worth staking. We have explored the landscape, surveyed the ravines and dangerous cliffs, laboriously removed the boulders and even dynamited a few tree stumps. Stake planted. Ok, so now I’m going… 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 »
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 »
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 »
Over the last year our blog has seen a boom in visits and of course, I became curious. What brings people to “Our 2 SNPs…”? So, I decided to take a look at the blog posts that our community find the most intriguing. Here are my findings: Comparing BEAGLE, IMPUTE2, and Minimac Imputation Methods for Accuracy, Computation Time, and Memory… Read more »
Last week we conducted a webcast on “Cancer Gene Panels”; you can find the recording here. We had some excellent questions which we answered during the webcast and a few more that we didn’t get to in the allotted time. Please find answers to those questions here: 1. Are Cancer Gene Panels just another stepping stone on the way to… 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 »
Personal genome sequencing is rapidly changing the landscape of clinical genetics. With this development also comes a new set of challenges. For example, every sequenced exome presents the clinical geneticist with thousands of variants. The job at hand is to find out which one might be responsible for the person’s illness. In order to reduce the search space, clinicians use various methods… 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 »
Today, Golden Helix and Fluxion Biosciences announced a collaboration in a value-added reseller relationship. The relationship will bring the VarSeq software application to Fluxion’s global client base providing them with a method to study tumor DNA in the circulation. Fluxion is proud to offer the capability as it helps move them toward their goal of offering a complete sample-to-answer workflow for… Read more »
Today, we at Golden Helix announced our collaboration with PreventionGenetics as they prepare to implement the VarSeq software into their exome sequencing pipeline. The VarSeq software will allow PreventionGenetics to offer an exome test by dramatically speeding up the analysis process. VarSeq will narrow down sequence data into gene(s) of interest based on inheritance patterns, facilitating the identification of clinically relevant… Read more »
