Golden Helix Blog

Updates to ClinVar Curation to Include More Pathogenic Variants

Sep 14, 2021

In the September 2021 monthly update to our curated ClinVar track, we made some changes that will result in roughly another 7,000 Likely Pathogenic and Pathogenic variants being available for variant annotation and use in the ACMG auto-classification system.  Consensus Between Labs  ClinVar has nearly one million unique variant classification records that are curated…

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Case Study with LifeCell International: Transforming Precision Medicine in India

Sep 13, 2021

Established in 2004 and headquartered in Chennai, India, with regional centers across the country, LifeCell runs India’s largest stem cell bank and has also diversified into diagnostics and tissue therapeutics. They employ roughly 2,000 people, providing genetic services to customers in the mother and baby space. Phani Nagaraja Setty is…

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Merging VCFs in an Imperfect World

Sep 7, 2021

Merging variant records, VCFs, across samples is important when performing trio analysis or family analysis as it ensures that hereditary relationships can be properly inferred. There are many ways to represent a single variant. Insertions and deletions may be right or left aligned, prefixes and suffixes can be added, and…

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2021 T-Shirt Design Competition Winners

Sep 2, 2021

We would like to thank everyone who participated in our 2021 t-shirt design competition. It was great to see the amount of creativity our community expressed and was certainly a tough decision to make! We are pleased to announce this year’s winners: First Place – Bruce Eng For over 35…

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VSClinical Customer Publications for August 2021

Aug 31, 2021

Welcome to the August 2021 edition of our customer publications blog post! Each month we spotlight a few recently published articles by our incredible Golden Helix customers. With users spanning both research and clinical spaces, the topics vary widely across many fields. This month, we will be highlighting VSClinical users…

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ESHG 2021 Corporate Satellite Talks

Aug 26, 2021

Join the Golden Helix team at this year’s ESHG 2021 Virtual Conference! We will be presenting two different talks on our different product solutions and fielding any questions you might have. VSClinical: a comprehensive NGS clinical solution The first talk, VSClinical: a comprehensive NGS clinical solution, will be on Sun,…

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Efficient Gene Panel Utilization in VarSeq

Aug 24, 2021

Clinical diagnostic efforts in next-generation sequencing are commonly defined at a gene panels level. The validation process of adding new genes to any diagnostic panel is ongoing, but labs typically construct and validate their clinical workflows for the current status of verified genes. This is not limited to primary finding…

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Manage gene lists across projects with VarSeq and VSClinical

Aug 18, 2021

Clinical labs often maintain gene panels, which are lists of genes with evidence of disease association. These panels are used to prioritize variants and limit interpretations to a predefined set of test-specific genes. In general, gene panels should be stored independently of any specific project or interpretation, as it is…

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Golden Helix Named on Inc 5000 List of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for 3rd Consecutive Year

Aug 17, 2021

Inc. magazine today revealed that Golden Helix, Inc. is No. 3267 on its annual Inc. 5000 list, the most prestigious ranking of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. The list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment—its independent small businesses. Intuit, Zappos,…

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How a neonate’s rash can be one of your most important pieces of data: making phenotypic info statistically tractable for clinical diagnostics

Aug 5, 2021

I remember visiting a patient in the NICU amongst the incubators, some glowing blue like tiny tanning beds to treat jaundice, all containing tiny humans – many smaller than a loaf of bread. Infants get admitted into the neonatal intensive care unit or NICU for many reasons ranging from elevated…

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Customer Publications in July 2021

Jul 29, 2021

In the July 2021 Customer Publication blog, I will highlight four studies that provided further insights into conditions that are typically identified in early childhood. As you will see as you read the summaries of each publication, both Golden Helix software platforms (VarSeq and SNP & Variation Suite or SVS…

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Leveraging expert-curated variant interpretations using VSClinical

Jul 27, 2021

This blog post will cover an exciting new VSClinical feature in the upcoming VarSeq release. The ACMG Previously Interpreted Variants feature allows users to integrate databases of expert-curated variant interpretations into their VSClinical workflows. These data sources store variant-level interpretation data, including the classification, associated disorders, interpretation text, and scored…

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Highlights from “Reduce Turn-Around with Enhanced Cancer Annotations and Golden Helix CancerKB Updates”

Jul 22, 2021

We had a wonderful turnout for our recent webcast, “Reduce Turn-Around with Enhanced Cancer Annotations & Golden Helix CancerKB Updates.” Thanks so much to those who were able to join us! And not to worry, we have a link to the recording here just in case you weren’t able to make it. We covered…

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Golden Helix Named to 10 Innovative Biotechnology Solution Companies for 2021

Jul 19, 2021

Golden Helix is proud to be recognized as a top biotechnology solution provider, named one of MirrorReview’s 10 Innovative Biotechnology Solution Companies for 2021. This acknowledgment reflects over two decades of dedication to advancing bioinformatics and empowering the global genomics community. Our success would not be possible without the support…

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Merged gnomAD Genomes and Exomes Annotation Source

Jul 15, 2021

The Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD) is a resource developed by an international coalition of investigators, with the goal of aggregating and harmonizing both exome and genome sequencing data from a wide variety of large-scale sequencing projects (1). We have covered this annotation in-depth in other blog posts, but this resource…

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An end to diagnostic odysseys?

Jul 13, 2021

Could leveraging CNV analysis for whole exome or genome sequencing help provide answers for the undiagnosed? Roughly 4% of the world’s population shares one common desire – a diagnosis (1). Though it may seem counterintuitive, a diagnosis, no matter how grim, can provide relief, validation, the chance to make plans,…

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Customer Publications Throughout June 2021

Jun 29, 2021

Golden Helix’s solutions are leveraged in a wide variety of scientific fields. As always, we are thrilled to showcase some of the newly published articles written by our customers in June 2021. Here are a few that utilized VarSeq’s powerful scalability analyzing whole exome sequencing data. WES can identify variations…

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Selecting Clinically Relevant Transcripts in VarSeq

Jun 28, 2021

One of the many tricks of encoding so much functionality into so little space in eukaryotic genomes is the ability to produce multiple distinct mRNAs (transcripts) from a single gene. While one transcript is often the dominant one for a given tissue or cell type, there are, of course, exceptions…

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Golden Helix’s Next-Gen Sequencing Data Analysis Solutions Explained

Jun 22, 2021

Next-gen sequencing (NGS) comprises many sophisticated steps that are often compressed into three major sections: library prep, sequencing, and data analysis. Understanding each stage of NGS data analysis is essential for building efficient clinical workflows. Obviously, the goal is to simplify each of these steps, but more often than not,…

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VSPipeline Best Practices

Jun 17, 2021

VSPipeline is becoming a very popular tool among VarSeq users as it is essential for creating repeatable clinical workflows that can be executed in automated fashion, supporting everything from variant filtering to clinical reporting. Since VSPipeline is a command-line tool, I think it would be helpful to discuss some of the best practices along with helpful tips for getting the most out of VSPipeline.   Some of you may be less familiar with VSPipeline, so…

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