We are always excited to see how our software is used to support research and enable precision medicine. We believe that our customer’s success is ultimately our success! This summer was filled with many wonderful publications from across the globe and we are proud to have been a part of them. Here are just a few from each month: June… Read more »
In the world of genomics shaping precision medicine in oncology, the limiting factor is the time-to-sign-out of a fully interpreted molecular profile report. There are many components of the entire testing process that add to the turn-around time of each test. Many of these steps, such as sample prep, sequencing, and automated secondary analysis, are bounded and consistent in their time requirements. The hands-on… Read more »
With the increasing knowledge of mutations involved in cancer, it is imperative to have a tertiary analysis pipeline that provides users with the most up to date information on somatic mutations. VSClinical’s Cancer Add-On does just that and more; with this feature, users can investigate and report on SNVs, indels, CNVs, gene fusions, and considerations for wild type genes in… Read more »
Earlier this week, Inc. magazine ranked Golden Helix on the 2019 Inc. 5000 list with three-year revenue growth of 61%. The Inc. 5000 list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the American economy’s most dynamic segment—its independent small businesses. Microsoft, Dell, Domino’s Pizza, Pandora, Timberland, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first… Read more »
We would like to thank everyone who participated in our 2019 t-shirt design competition. It was great to see the amount of creativity our community expressed! We are pleased to announce this year’s winners: First Place – Dr. Marina Trigueros Dr. Marina Trigueros is a Science Illustrator and 3D Animator at Cariboo Design, a studio devoted to explaining scientific topics… Read more »
Huntington’s Disease (HD) Background Huntington’s Disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disease that is caused by a mutation in the huntingtin (HTT) gene resulting in 36 or more CAG trinucleotide repeats in exon 1. Individuals affected by HD experience motor disorders including involuntary movements and poor coordination, cognitive impairments showing a decline in thinking and reasoning and psychiatric disorders… Read more »
Secondary Analysis with Sentieon: Rapid and Accurate Variant Calling This blog post will cover the utilization of secondary analysis tools to produce a list of high-quality variants and associated coverage data. This data will serve as the main, importable content for the tertiary stage of analysis where variants are interpreted and classified for their impact on a patients’ disorder. We… Read more »
As our regular customers may know, we write our blogs to provide relevant content to any NGS-based analysis with VarSeq. Our goal here at Golden Helix is to provide top quality software and guidance on how to use the software efficiently to perform variant analysis. However, this blog series will take a more general perspective and supply some insight into… Read more »
Congenital Myasthenic Syndromes (CMS) History: Congenital Myasthenic Syndromes (CMS) are a group of rare hereditary conditions that can cause seizures, severe muscle weakness, respiratory problems, and potentially disabling weaknesses shortly after birth or early childhood (1). CMS is the result of abnormalities in acetylcholine proteins residing in the motor endplate of the neuromuscular junction (1). These abnormalities can be diagnosed… Read more »
When using VarSeq; annotations, application settings, and assessment catalogs are all stored locally. Sometimes these resources can grow to large space grabbing directories, causing you to either purchase additional storage devices or getting rid of previously downloaded resources you might need down the road. But there’s hope! You can set where you want all of your data stored to be… Read more »
Smoothing Hurdles into Speed Bumps when creating Annotation Sources Although most researchers assume that getting the pile of VCF sequence files is the largest hurdle in moving towards an analysis, there still exists the looming step of normalizing the variant calls in annotation sources to make variant comparison easier. In this ever-refining field of study, VarSeq continually works to increase… Read more »
Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy History It was December 9th, 1989, when one of Loyola Marymount’s strongest inside players, Hank Gathers, collapsed during the middle of a collegiate level basketball game against UC Santa Barbara. Measuring in at 6’7” and weighing 210 pounds, Gathers was diagnosed with exercise-induced ventricular tachycardia, or in layman’s terms, an abnormal heartbeat. Even with the concerning nature of… Read more »
Clinical Variant Analysis for Cancer – Applying AMP Guidelines to Analyze Somatic Variants Detecting cancer at an early stage can make it much more treatable. Developing tests and making them clinically actionable is crucial to beat this disease. This eBook covers the state-of-the-art gene panel tests for cancer. Of course, there is more that can be done. The field is… Read more »
We are upgrading all VSClinical +Cancer Add-On purchases to a 15-months license! The individualized nature of tumors requires genomic testing for providing the best outcomes for patients. Next-Gen Sequencing enables the detection of small mutations, copy number changes, and common fusions affordably and with high precision. However, the interpretation of these detected variants is arduous without a comprehensive analytical workflow… Read more »
Clinical Variant Analysis for Cancer – Applying AMP Guidelines to Analyze Somatic Variants Somatic variants can manifest in different ways: There is a difference between the interpretation of germline and somatic variants. The former is exclusively focused on establishing the level of pathogenicity vis a vis a particular disease. In contrast to that, when we assess the clinical implication of… Read more »
Clinical Variant Analysis for Cancer – Applying AMP Guidelines to Analyze Somatic Variants As described in my eBook “Genetic Testing for Cancer,” any bioinformatic pipeline for cancer ultimately calls variants based on the aligned reads that the sequencer generated. Variant calling is the process of reviewing a sequence alignment, typically in the form of a BAM file, to identify loci… Read more »
Clinical Variant Analysis for Cancer – Applying AMP Guidelines to Analyze Somatic Variants Analogous to the ACMG guidelines for germline mutations, the Association for Molecular Pathologists (AMP) has issued guidelines to assess and report on somatic variants. The key paper in this area was published by Li et. al (2017) with the title “Standards and Guidelines for the Interpretation and… Read more »
Clinical Variant Analysis for Cancer – Applying AMP Guidelines to Analyze Somatic Variants Precision Medicine uses genetic information from individual patients. This may include the following areas: Specifically, in the cancer space, data derived from Next-Gen Sequencing (NGS) is used to diagnose and prognose diseases, select a targeted therapy and potentially evaluate the suitability of a patient to be part… Read more »
Applying AMP Guidelines to Analyze Somatic Variants Today, I am thrilled to share with you the launch of a brand new eBook titled “Clinical Variant Analysis for Cancer – Applying AMP Guidelines to Analyze Somatic Variants”. We would happy to send you a complimentary copy which can be requested on our website here. The clinical utilization of Next-Gen Sequencing data… Read more »
Yesterday, I released a new version of my eBook, “Genetic Testing for Cancer – Third Edition”. We would be happy to send you one! To download a complimentary copy, please submit a request on our site here. In 1914, the German cytologist Theodor Boveri coined the phrase “Cancer is a disease of the genome.” At this time, his ideas were… Read more »
