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 »
Cyber security threats to organizations are more diverse and dangerous than ever, ranging from curious teenagers testing their skills to insider threats and state-sponsored hackers. On the highest-end, some state-financed actors extend their reach as far as possible into foreign countries. Motivation and intentions might vary, but the outcome for the targeted organization is the same. Data breaches lead to a lack of trust in the… Read more »
As many of our users know, GRCh38 VarSeq project templates come preloaded with the software and are designed to give users a baseline workflow to streamline their NGS analysis. 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… Read more »
Data and cyber 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… Read more »
January 2020 has started strong for Golden Helix customers who are engaged in research projects! We are delighted to see so many publications in January 2020 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,… Read more »
Customizing VSClinical ACMG Guidelines Workflow Part 2 In the first part of this series, we covered how VarSeq supports customizing ACMG guidelines in VSClinical to streamline the clinical analysis workflow. 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…. 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 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 »
We’re excited to kick off the year with the release of our latest eBook, “Cyber Security Strategies for NGS Testing Labs“. As precision medicine continues to transform healthcare through data-driven diagnostics and targeted therapies, it brings with it a new set of challenges—particularly around protecting sensitive genomic data. Traditionally, clinical laboratories and healthcare providers focused on physical security measures. Today, cyber threats… 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: Now, for 2020 we will plan to continue to build on this success. Here are some… 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 »
Thank you all for tuning in to yesterday’s webcast, “Simplify Your GWAS & Genomic Prediction with SVS”. I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did! If you didn’t get a chance to join us for this live webcast, you can watch the recording below. We covered a lot of topics in so little time, but you all… Read more »
If you have watched this blog over time, it would be no surprise that Golden Helix invests a lot in curating genomic annotations for use with our clinical and research analysis products. Often, we spend considerable time on the attention to detail necessary to ensure the best experience for any data source by cleaning, normalizing, documenting and then distributing it through our data annotation server. Many annotations… Read more »
